m 
I 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


The  Wisdom  of 
Woodrow  Wilson 


The  Wisdom  of 

Woodrow  Wilson 


BEING  SELECTIONS  FROM  HIS 

THOUGHTS    AND    COMMENTS 

ON    POLITICAL,    SOCIAL    AND 

MORAL  QUESTIONS 


COMPILED  AND  WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION 

BY  CHARLES  J.  HEROLD 


NEW  YORK 

BRENTANO'S 

MCMXIX 


Copyright,  1919,  by  Brentano's 


CONTENTS 

fcflft 


PREFACE,  xv 


PATRIOTISM,  1 

National  reconciliation,  3 
Practical  patriotism,  3 
Keeping  a  promise,  6 
Physical  and  moral  courage,  7 
Turn  to  the  future,  9 

SOCIAL  JUSTICE,  11 

Shield  wo.men  and  children,  13 
Restore,  not  destroy,  14 
Ideals  lost,  14 
Ease  the  burden,  15 
Unfair  competition,  16 
Eight-hour  day,   16 
Railroads  declined,  18 

POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY,  21 
Our  standards,  23 
Very  few  rise,  24 
Lift  it  up,  24 
A  new  age,  25 
A  revolution,  26 
Changes  needed,  26 


PITHY  SAYINGS,  29 
Spirit  of  age,  31 
Life  and  logic,  31 

72G1G1 


CONTENTS 


PITHY  SAYINGS— Continued 
Genuine  speech,  32 
Liars  and  truth,  33 
The  Constitution,  34 
Gossips,  35 

WOMAN  SUFFRAGE,  37 
Rapid  growth,  38 
Technical  difficulties,  40 
Will  prevail,  40 
Be  patient,  42 

THOUGHTS  ON  LITERATURE,  43 
Prose  and  poetry,  45 
Books  and  friends,  46 
Praise  of  your  own  day,  46 
Individuality,  47 
Gibbon,  48 

REMARKS  OF  THE  EDUCATOR,  49 
Motives  in  life,  51 
A  pathfinder,  52 
A  rebirth,  53 

GOVERNMENTAL  MAXIMS,  55 
Armed  force,  57 
Minority  and  majority,  57 
Public  opinion,  59 
Degeneracy,  60 


CONTENTS 


GOVERNMENTAL  MAXIMS — Continued 
Illegitimate  means,  61 
President  as  spokesman,  61 
Leader  of  his  party,  62 
Personal  force,  63 
No  mere  domestic  figure,  63 
Kaiser's  powers,  64 
State  no  evil,  65 
Socialists  and  society,  65 
Government  an  instrument,  66 
The  wisest  thing,  67 
Practical  reforms,  67 
The  states,  68 
Ti.e  presidency,  69 
Guide  of  the  nation,  69 
The  unifying  force,  70 

PROGRESSIVE  TENDENCIES,  71 
Radicalism,  73 
Open  processes,  73 
The  inventor,  74 
The  referendum,  74 
Protective  policy,  75 
Owned  by  corporations,  75 
Controlling  class,  76 
Abolish  privilege,  76 
Adjustment,  77 
Crushing  the  weak,  77 


CONTENTS 


PROGRESSIVE  TENDENCIES — Continued 
Tariff  revised,  78 
Merchant  marine  recreated,  79 
Played  big  brother,  81 
No  more  provincialism,  81  - 


AMERICANISM,  83 

America's  vitality,  85 

No  guardian,  86 

Is  a  person,  87 

Our  affair,  87 

Fundamental  things,  88 

Nothing  for  herself,  89 

Two  theories,  91 

Not  a  great  American,  91 

Providing  prosperity,  92 

Rejects  trustee  theory,  92 

No  wards  wanted,  94 

No  groups,  94 

Oath  of  allegiance,  96 

Founded  for  humanity,  97 

Prais*  for  Lincoln,  99 

Assisted  by  experts,  99 

True  Americans,  100 

Vicious  discrimination,  101 

Declaration  of  Independence,  103 

Looking  from  the  White  House,  105 

The  world  admired,  107 


CONTENTS 


AMERICANISM — Continued 
Irresistible  competition,  108 
The  spirit  of  freedom,  108 
In  the  wilderness,  111 
Typical,  111 

FOR  HUMANITY,  113 

Bring  liberty  to  mankind,  115 

Spirit  of  unselfishness,   116 

A  war  of  service,  117 

Sample  Americans,  118 

Serving  a  people,  119 

Lift  his  brother,  120 

Surging  up  of  new  strength,  122 

ECONOMIC  PROBLEMS,  125 
New  banking  system,  127 
Must  mobilize  reserves,  128 
Changes  in  fiscal  laws,  129 
Our  merchant  marine  stunted,  130 
Embodies  convincing  experience,  130 
The  world  and  American  commerce,  132 

INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS,  135 
Mexico  and  the  future,  137 
Policy  of  impartiality,   137 
The  Latin-American  states,  139 
Settled  peace  and  good  will,   141 


PREFACE 


PREFACE 


WHAT  are  the  strange  powers 
that  have  made  of  a  one- 
time teacher  of  youth  a  supreme  lead- 
er of  men,  a  universally  acclaimed 
champion  of  freedom  for  all  the 
world  ? 

A  well-stored  mind,  a  pitiless  logic, 
a  retentive  memory,  a  felicitous  turn 
of  phrase,  a  wisdom  serene  yet  vibrant, 
a  happy  gift  of  coining  aphorisms 
containing  multum  in  parvo,  a  states- 
manlike grasp  of  affairs,  an  eloquent 
tongue  that  never  fails,  an  interpreta- 
tion of  advanced  thought  in  an  era 
fermenting  with  new  ideas,  a  tireless 
energy  and  enormous  driving  force, — 
when  one  speaks  of  these  excellent  and 
choice  qualities,  one  has  but  scratched 
the  surface.  The  core  of  his  being,  his 
inmost  soul,  has  not  been  touched 
upon. 

In    Woodrow    Wilson    is    met    that 


THE    WISDOM   OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

rarest  of  human  combinations — con- 
sistency coupled  with  lucid  vjsion,  high 
ideals  and  crystal-pure  sincerity.  That 
furnishes  the  key  to  his  singular  char- 
acter. 

When  his  record  is  searched,  when 
the  four  decades  that  have  gone  since 
he  first  drank  knowledge  at  the  bosom 
of  his  alma  mater  are  scanned  closely, 
the  astounding  discovery  is  made  that 
the  convictions,  the  longings  of  his 
early  days  are  his  convictions  of  to-day; 
that  his  ideals  then  are  his  ideals  now; 
that  the  Americanism  of  his  youth  is 
also  the  Americanism  of  his  manhood; 
that  his  love  of  country  and  of  hu- 
manity has  unvariedly  remained  the 
same  in  intensity,  in  kind,  in  loftiness 
of  conception,  in  purity  of  purpose  and 
in  grandeur  of  aim.  With  increasing 
maturity  his  faith  in  the  vision  of  his 
youth  increased.  Truly,  the  boy 


PREFACE 

dreamer,  dreamed  profoundly,  for  he 
awakened  and  found  his  dream  world 
real. 

The  germ  of  his  gospel  of  world- 
peace  and  world-righteousness  as  it 
found  final  and  finished  expression  in 
those  fourteen  points  that  are  at  this 
very  hour  the  text  for  a  body  of  this 
earth's  most  powerful  statesmen  to 
wrestle  with,  to  ponder,  and  in  the 
main  to  accede  to,  is  to  be  seen  in 
his  earliest,  still  somewhat  callow  writ- 
ings, in  his  book  on  Congressional 
Government.  The  germ  gradually  de- 
velops and  grows  in  size,  but  its  essence 
remains  the  same. 

Like  a  scarlet  thread  it  runs  through 
the  woof  of  all  his  subsequent  political 
reflections,  his  essays,  his  political 
speeches,  his  lectures,  his  commentaries 
on  international  affairs,  on  the  mission 
of  America.  Many  years  later,  in  his 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

book  dealing  with  Constitutional  Gov- 
ernment in  the  United  States,  the  idea 
expands,  shows  deeper  insight  and 
more  vigorous  roots,  and  in  The  State, 
an  admirable  expose  of  governmental 
science  and  imbued  with  an  enlightened 
humanitarianism,  it  has  attained  a 
further  growth.  Finally,  in  his  ora- 
tions and  addresses  delivered  since  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  in  the  summer  of 
1914,  the  last  fruition  of  it  is  seen  in 
his  "League  of  Nations,"  and  in  the 
principles  laid  down  by  him  for  a 
durable,  just  peace. 

True,  the  scope  of  his  survey  has 
widened;  his  eye  now  discerns  in  clearer 
outline  what  at  first  was  beheld  but 
dimly.  His  diction  has  gained  in  pith, 
in  strength,  in  authority,  and  his  images 
in  color  and  variety.  He  has  a  firmer 
grasp  of  his  subject,  betraying  the 
ceaseless  thought  given  to  it,  and  his 


PREFACE 


eye  ranges  a  larger  horizon.  But  his 
ideal  is  still  the  same.  He  proves  true 
to  his  early  loves:  enlightened  democ- 
racy, freedom  for  a  shackled  world, 
fraternal  help  to  the  purblind,  strug- 
gling nations,  whether  near  or  far,  the 
rule  of  the  law  throughout  the  two 
hemispheres. 

It  is  the  dogma  of  America,  of 
America  at  her  best.  It  embraces  jus- 
tice, justice  even  to  the  vanquished  foe, 
justice  tempered  with  mercy.  It  is  a 
broadening  of  Lincoln's  doctrine,  an 
elaboration  including  all  the  peoples 
of  the  universe.  No  wonder  that 
Abraham  Lincoln  dwells  so  firmly  in 
Woodrow  Wilson's  heart,  that  he  finds 
such  high  praise  for  him  in  his  speech 
and  in  his  writings :  that  he  holds  him, 
next  to  Washington,  the  greatest  . 
American.  For  he  himself  is  bone  of 
Lincoln's  bone,  and  flesh  of  his  flesh. 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

But  Woodrow  Wilson's  style  pre- 
sents a  marked  contrast.  It  shows  the 
wide  and  ripened  culture  of  the  man. 
It  embraces  all  literature.  It  is  pre- 
cise, ornate,  full  of  metaphor,  pictur- 
esque, scarcely  ever  homely,  such  as 
that  of  the  great  Illinoisan.  It  is  not 
even  homely  when  dallying  with  lighter 
fancy,  with  anecdote  and  fireside  tale. 
Nevertheless,  it  possesses  great  charm. 
It  teems  with  quotable  sayings.  And 
its  fund  of  illustration  is  great.  Serious, 
thoughtful,  a  vein  of  high  morality 
tincturing  it,  the  wisdom  taught  by 
Woodrow  Wilson  is  yet  never  morose 
or  esoteric,  but  highly  practical.  And 
of  course,  since  his  manhood  as  teacher 
and  statesman  has  chiefly  concerned  it- 
self with  political  problems,  it  is  there 
that  the  lessons  he  conveys  are  most 
potent  and  most  pointed. 


NOTE 

Acknowledgment  is  hereby  made  to  the  following 
publishers  for  permission  to  quote  from  books 
published  by  them:  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co. 
("The  New  Freedom")  ;  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. 
("The  State")  ;  T.  Y.  Crowell  Co.  ("The  Free 
Life")  ;  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.  ("Mere  Litera- 
ture") ;  Harper  &  Bros.  ("On  Being  Human," 
''When  a  Man  Comes  to  Himself")  ;  and  Columbia 
University  Press  ("Constitutional  Government"). 


PATRIOTISM 


PATRIOTISM 


WE  have  found  one  another  again 
as  brothers  and  comrades  in 
arms,  enemies  no  longer,  generous 
friends  rather,  our  battles  long  past, 
the  quarrel  forgotten — except  that  we 
shall  not  forget  the  splendid  valor,  the 
manly  devotion  of  the  men  then  arrayed 
against  one  another,  now  grasping 
hands  and  smiling  into  each  other's 
eyes.  How  complete  the  union  has 
become  and  how  dear  to  all  of  us,  how 
unquestioned,  how  benign  and  majestic, 
as  State  after  State  has  been  added  to 
this  our  great  family  of  free  men! 

Delivered  in  the  presence  of  Union  and  Con- 
federate veterans,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Gettys- 
burg, July  4,  1913. 


LIBERTY    does    not    consist,    my 
fellow-citizens,     in    mere    general 
declarations  of  the  rights  of  man.     It 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

consists  in  the  translation  of  those 
declarations  into  definite  action.  We 
must  reduce  it  to  what  the  lawyers  call 
a  bill  of  particulars.  It  contains  a  bill 
of  particulars,  but  the  bill  of  particu- 
lars of  1776.  If  we  would  keep  it 
alive,  we  must  fill  it  with  a  bill  of 
particulars  of  the  year  1914.  Patriot- 
ism consists  in  some  very  practical 
things — practical  in  that  they  belong 
to  the  life  of  every  day,  that  they  wear 
no  extraordinary  distinction  about  them, 
that  they  are  connected  with  common- 
place duty.  The  way  to  be  patriotic  in 
America  is  not  only  to  love  America 
but  to  love  the  duty  that  lies  nearest 
to  our  hand  and  know  that  in  perform- 
ing it  we  are  serving  our  country. 

It  is  patriotic,  also,  to  learn  what 
the  facts  of  our  national  life  are  and 
to  face  them  with  candor. 

It  is  not  patriotic  to   concert  meas- 


PATRIOTISM 


ures  against  one  another;  it  is  patriotic 
to  concert  measures  for  one  another. 

In  one  sense  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  has  lost  its  significance. 
It  has  lost  its  significance  as  a  declara- 
tion of  national  independence.  Nobody 
outside  of  America  believed  when  it 
was  uttered  that  we  could  make  good 
our  independence;  now  nobody  any- 
where would  dare  to  doubt  that  we  are 
independent  and  can  maintain  our  in- 
dependence. As  a  declaration  of  inde- 
pendence, therefore,  it  is  a  mere  historic 
document.  Our  independence  is  a  fact 
so  stupendous  that  it  can  be  measured 
only  by  the  size  and  energy  and  variety 
and  wealth  and  power  of  one  of  the 
greatest  nations  in  the  world. 

I  would  be  ashamed  of  this  flag  if 
it  ever  did  anything  outside  America 
that  we  would  not  permit  it  to  do 
inside  of  America. 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


And  so  I  say  that  it  is  patriotic 
sometimes  to  prefer  the  honor  of  the 
country  to  its  material  interest.  Would 
you  rather  be  deemed  by  all  the  nations 
of  the  world  incapable-  of  keeping  your 
treaty  obligations  in  order  that  you 
might  have  free  tolls  for  American 
ships?  The  treaty  under  which  we 
gave  up  that  right  may  have  been  a 
mistaken  treaty,  but  there  was  no  mis- 
take about  its  meaning. 

When  I  have  made  a  promise  as  a 
man  I  try  to  keep  it,  and  I  know  of 
no  other  rule  permissible  to  a  nation. 
The  most  distinguished  nation  in  the 
world  is  the  nation  that  can  and  will 
keep  its  promises  even  to  its  own  hurt. 

A  patriotic  American  is  a  man  who  is 
not  niggardly  and  selfish  in  the  things 
that  he  enjoys  that  make  for  human 
liberty  and  the  rights  of  man.  He 
wants  to  share  them  with  the  whole 


Keepin, 
a  prom\ 


PATRIOTISM 


world,  and  he  is  never  so  proud  of  the 
great  flag  under  which  he  lives  as  when 
it  comes  to  mean  to  other  people  as 
well  as  to  himself  a  symbol  of  hope. 

" The  Meaning  of  Liberty,"  an  address  delivered 
at  Independence  Hall,  Philadelphia,  July 
4,  1914. 

NOBILITY  exists  in  America  with- 
out patent.  We  have  no  House 
of  Lords,  but  we  have  a  house  of 
fame  to  which  we  elevate  those  who 
are  the  noble  men  of  our  race,  who, 
forgetful  of  themselves,  study  and 
serve  the  public  interest,  who  have  the 
courage  to  face  any  number  and  any 
kind  of  adversary,  to  speak  what  in 
their  hearts  they  believe  to  be  the 
truth. 

We  admire  physical  courage,  but  we 
admire  above  all  things  else  moral 
courage.  I  believe  that  soldiers  will 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

bear  me  out  in  saying  that  both  come 
in  time  of  battle.  I  take  it  that  the 
moral  courage  comes  in  going  into  the 
battle,  and  the  physical  courage  in  stay- 
ing in.  There  are  battles  which  are 
just  as  hard  to  go  into  and  just  as  hard 
to  stay  in  as  the  battles  of  arms,  and 
if  the  man  will  but  stay  and  think 
never  of  himself  there  will  come  a 
time  of  grateful  recollection  when  men 
will  speak  of  him  not  only  with  ad- 
miration but  with  that  which  goes 
deeper,  with  affection  and  with  rev- 
erence. 

So  that  this  flag  calls  upon  us  daily 
for  service,  and  the  more  quiet  and 
self-denying  the  service  the  greater  the 
glory  of  the  flag.  We  are  dedicated  to 
freedom,  and  that  freedom  means  the 
freedom  of  the  human  spirit. 

Memorial   Day    Address,    National    Cemetery, 
Arlington,    Va.,   May    30,    1914. 


PATRIOTISM 


M 


Y    privilege    is    this,    ladies    and     Turn  to 

^  .  '      ~  ...  the  future 

gentlemen :  I  o  declare  this  chap- 


ter in  the  history  of  the  United  States 
closed  and  ended,  and  I  bid  you  turn 
with  me  with  your  faces  to  the  future, 
quickened  by  the  memories  of  the  past, 
but  with  nothing  to  do  with  the  contests 
of  the  past,  knowing,  as  we  have  shed 
our  blood  upon  opposite  sides,  we  now 
face  and  admire  one  another. 

Address  on  accepting  the  monument  in  Memory 
of  the  Confederate  Dead,  June  4,  1914. 


SOCIAL  JUSTICE 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE 


WE  have  studied,  as  perhaps  no 
other  nation  has,  the  most 
effective  means  of  production,  but  we 
have  not  studied  cost  or  economy  as 
we  should,  either  as  organizers  of  in- 
dustry, as  statesmen,  or  as  individuals. 
Nor  have  we  studied  and  perfected 
the  means  by  which  government  may 
be  put  at  the  service  of  humanity,  in 
safeguarding  the  health  of  the  Nation, 
the  health  of  its  men  and  its  women 
and  its  children,  as  well  as  their  rights 
in  the  struggle  for  existence.  This  is 
no  sentimental  duty.  The  firm  basis  of 
government  is  justice,  not  pity.  These 
are  matters  of  justice.  There  can  be 
no  equality  of  opportunity,  the  first 
essential  of  justice  in  the  body  politic, 
if  men  and  women  and  children  be  not 
shielded  in  their  lives,  their  very  vital- 
ity, from  the  consequences  of  great 
industrial  and  social  processes  which 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


they  cannot  alter,  control,  or  singly 
cope  with.  Society  must  see  to  it  that 
it  does  not  itself  crush  or  weaken  or 
damage  its  own  constituent  parts.  The 
first  duty  of  law  is  to  keep  sound  the 
society  it  serves. 


Restore, 

not 

destroy 


Ideals 
lost 


WE  shall  restore,  not  destroy.  We 
shall  deal  with  our  economic 
system  as  it  is  and  as  it  may  be  modi- 
fied, not  as  it  might  be  if  we  had  a 
clean  sheet  of  paper  to  write  upon; 
and  step  by  step  we  shall  make  it  what 
it  should  be,  in  the  spirit  of  those  who 
question  their  own  wisdom  and  seek 
counsel  and  knowledge,  not  shallow  self- 
satisfaction  or  the  excitement  of  excur- 
sions whither  they  cannot  tell.  Justice, 
and  only  justice,  shall  always  be  our 
motto.  The  Nation  has  been  deeply 
stirred,  stirred  by  a  solemn  passion, 
stirred  by  the  knowledge  of  wrong,  of 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE 


ideals  lost,  of  government  too  often 
debauched  and  made  an  instrument  of 
evil.  The  feelings  with  which  we  face 
this  new  age  of  right  and  opportunity 
sweep  across  our  heartstrings  like  some 
air  out  of  God's  own  presence,  where 
justice  and  mercy  are  reconciled  and 
the  judge  and  the  brother  are  one. 
This  is  not  a  day  of  triumph;  it  is  a  day 
of  dedication. 

First  Inaugural  Address,  1913. 

IT    is    part    of    our    philosophy — it 
should  be  part  of  our  statesman- 
ship,— to   ease   the   burden   as   we   can, 
and   enfranchise   those  who  spend   and 
are  spent  for  the  sustenance  of  the  race. 

On  Being  Human. 


i6 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


THE  modern  industrial  organiza- 
tion has  so  distorted  competition 
as  sometimes  to  put  it  into  the  power 
of  some  to  tyrannize  over  many,  as  to 
enable  the  rich  and  the  strong  to  com- 
bine against  the  poor  and  the  weak. 


Unfair 
competi- 
tion 


Eight- 
hour 
day 


BUT    the    socialist    mistakes:    it    is 
not    competition    that    kills,    but 
unfair    competition,    the    pretense    and 
form  of  it  where  the  substance  and  real- 
ity of  it  cannot  exist. 

The  State,    1903. 

IT  seemed  to  me,  in  considering  the 
subject-matter  of  the  controversy, 
that  the  whole  spirit  of  the  time  and 
the  preponderant  evidence  of  recent 
economic  experience  spoke  for  the 
eight-hour  day.  It  has  been  adjudged 
by  the  thought  and  experience  of  recent 
years  a  thing  upon  which  society  is 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE 


justified  in  insisting  as  in  the  interest 
of  health,  efficiency,  contentment,  and 
a  general  increase  of  economic  vigor. 
The  whole  presumption  of  modern  ex- 
perience would,  it  seemed  to  me,  be  in 
its  favor,  whether  there  was  arbitra- 
tion or  not. 

I  unhesitatingly  offered  the  friendly 
services  of  the  administration  to  the 
railway  managers  to  see  to  it  that 
justice  was  done  the  railroads  in  the 
outcome.  I  felt  warranted  in  assuring 
them  that  no  obstacle  of  law  would  be 
suffered  to  stand  in  the  way  of  their 
increasing  their  revenues  to  meet  the 
expenses  resulting  from  the  change  so 
far  as  the  development  of  their  business 
and  of  their  administrative  efficiency 
did  not  prove  adequate  to  meet  them. 
The  public  and  the  representatives  of 
the  public,  I  felt  justified  in  assuring 
them,  were  disposed  to  nothing  but  jus- 


1 8  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

tice  in  such  cases  and  were  willing  to 
serve  those  who  served  them. 

The  representatives  of  the  brother- 
hoods accepted  the  plan;  but  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  railroads  declined  to 
accept  it.  In  the  face  of  what  I  can- 
not but  regard  as  the  practical  cer- 
tainty that  they  will  be  ultimately 
obliged  to  accept  the  eight-hour  day  by 
the  concerted  action  of  organized  la- 
bor, backed  by  the  favorable  judgment 
of  society,  the  representatives  of  the 
railway  management  have  felt  justified 
in  declining  a  peaceful  settlement  which 
would  engage  all  the  forces  of  justice, 
public  and  private,  on  their  side  to 
take  care  of  the  event. 

There  is  one  other  thing  we  should 
do  if  we  'are  true  champions  of  arbi- 
tration. We  should  make  all  arbitral 
awards  judgments  by  record  of  a  court 
of  law  in  order  that  their  interpretation 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE  19 

and  enforcement  may  lie,  not  with  one 
of  the  parties  to  the  arbitration,  but 
with  an  impartial  and  authoritative 
tribunal. 

The  Demands  of  Railway  Employees — an  ad- 
dress at  a  joint  session  of  Congress,  August  29, 
1916. 


POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 


POLITICAL    PHILOSOPHY 


WE  have  come  now  to  the  sober 
second  thought.  The  scales  of 
heedlessness  have  fallen  from  our  eyes. 
We  have  made  up  our  minds  to  square 
every  process  of  our  national  life  again 
with  the  standards  we  so  proudly  set 
up  at  the  beginning  and  have  always 
carried  at  our  hearts.  Our  work  is  a 
work  of  restoration. 

THE  great  Government  we  loved 
has  too  often  been  made  use  of  for 
private  and  selfish  purposes,  and  those 
who  used  it  had  forgotten  the  people. 

THERE  has  been  something  crude  and 
heartless  and  unfeeling  in  our  haste  to 
succeed  and  be  great. 

First  Inaugural  Address,  1913. 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Very  few 
rise 


Lift  it  up 


MOST    of    us    are    average    men; 
very  few  of  us  rise,  except  by 
fortunate    accident,    above    the    general 
level  of  the  community  about  us;  there- 
fore    the     man    who    thinks     common 
thoughts,   the  man  who  has  had  com- 
'  mon  experiences,   is   almost   always  the 
man  who  interprets  America  aright. 

THE  nations  are  renewed  from  the 
bottom,  not  from  the  top. 

THE  real  wisdom  of  human  life  is 
compounded  out  of  the  experiences  of 
ordinary  men. 

PUBLICITY  is  one  of  the  purifying 
elements  of  politics. 

THE  best  thing  that  you  can  do  with 
anything  that  is  crooked  is  to  lift  it  up 
where  people  can  see  that  it  is  crooked, 


POLITICAL    PHILOSOPHY 


and  then  it  will  either  straighten  itself 
out  or  disappear. 

LEGISLATION  as  we  nowadays  con- 
duct it,  is  not  conducted  in  the  open. 

WE  have  come  upon  a  very  dif- 
ferent age  from  any  that  pre- 
ceded us.  We  have  come  upon  an  age 
when  we  do  not  do  business  in  the 
way  we  used  to  do  business — when  we 
do  not  carry  on  any  of  the  operations 
of  manufacture,  sale,  transportation,  or 
communication  as  men  used  to  carry 
them  on.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  in 
our  day  the  individual  has  been  sub- 
merged. 

ONE  of  the  most  significant  signs  of 
the  new  social  era  is  the  degree  to 
which  government  has  become  asso- 
ciated with  big  business. 


26 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


A  revo- 
lution 


Changes 
needed 


WE  stand  in  the  presence  of  a 
revolution, — not  a  bloody 
revolution :  America  is  not  given  to 
the  spilling  of  blood, — but  a  silent 
revolution,  whereby  America  will  insist 
upon  recovering  in  practice  those  ideals 
which  she  has  always  professed,  upon 
securing  a  government  devoted  to  the 
general  interest  and  not  to  special 
interests. 

SOME  radical  changes  we  must 
make  in  our  law  and  practice. 
Some  reconstructions  we  must  push 
forward,  which  a  new  age  and  new 
circumstances  impose  upon  us.  But 
we  can  do  it  all  in  calm  and  sober 
fashion  like  statesmen  and  patriots. 

ONE  of  the  worst  features  of  the 
business  system  is  this  fact,  that  it  works 
secretly. 


POLITICAL    PHILOSOPHY  27 

POLITICAL  bosses  are  men  who  have 
worked  their  way  by  secret  methods 
to  the  power  they  occupy. 

WE  Americans  have  been  too  long 
satisfied  with  merely  going  through 
the  motions  of  government. 

The  New  Freedom. 


PITHY  SAYINGS 


PITHY    SAYINGS 


EVERY  man  must,  of  course,  wheth- 
er he  will  or  not,  feel  the  spirit 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lives  and  thinks 
and  does  his  work;  and  the  mere  con- 
tact will  direct  and  form  hyn  more  or 
less. 

THERE  is  a  greater  thing  than  the 
spirit  of  the  age,  and  that  is  the  spirit 
of  the  ages. 

An  Author's  Choice  of  Company. 

LIFE  quite  overturns  logic.  Thinking 
and  erudition  alone  will  not  equip  for  the 
great  tasks  and  triumphs  of  life  .  .  . 

DEFEAT  lies  in  self-surrender. 

The  Author  Hint's  elf. 

TRUE  friendship  is  of  a  royal  lineage. 
OUR  true  wisdom  is  in  our  ideals. 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

AND  so  the  fountain  of  learning  be- 
came the  fountain  of  perpetual  youth. 

The  Free  Life. 

THE  age  changes,  and  with  it  must 
change  our  ideas  of  human  quality. 

WE  need  wholesome,  experiencing 
natures,  I  dare  affirm,  much  more  than 
we  need  sound  reasoning. 


Genuint 
speech 


SPEECH  is  genuine  which  is  without 
silliness,  affectation,  or  pretense.  That 
character  is  genuine  which  seems  built 
by  nature  rather  than  by  convention. 


No  age  will  take  hysterical  reform. 


As  bad  times  as  these,  or  any  we 
shall  see,  have  been  reformed,  but  not 
by  protests. 


PITHY    SAYINGS 


IT  is  certainly  human  to  mind  your 
neighbor's  business  as  well  as  your 
own. 

On  Being  Human,  1906. 

CHARACTER  is  a  by-product, 
Y^y  and  any  man  who  devotes  him- 
self to  its  cultivation  in  his  own  case 
will  become  a  selfish  prig.  .  .  .  Life, 
gentlemen — the  life  of  society,  the  life 
of  the  world — has  constantly  to  be  fed 
from  the  bottom.  .  .  .  For,  gentle- 
men, this  is  an  age  in  which  the  prin- 
ciples of  men  who  utter  public  opinion 
dominate  the  world. 

The  Power  of  Christian  Young  Men,  being  an 
address-  at  the  Anniversary  Celebration  of 
the  r.  M.  C.  A. 

I  WOULD  guarantee  that  if  enough 
liars  talked  to  you,  you  would  get 
the  truth;   because   the  parts  that  they 


34 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


did  not  invent  would  match  one  an- 
other, and  the  parts  that  they  did  in- 
vent would  not  match  one  another. 

Address   before   the    United   States    Chamber   of 
Commerce,   February   3,    1915. 

SOMETIMES   the    country   believes    in 
a   party,   but  more  often  it  believes   in 


THE  President  is  becoming  more  and 
more  a  political  and  less  and  less  an 
executive  officer. 


The  Con 
titution 


THE  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  is  not  a  mere  lawyer's  document: 
it  is  a  vehicle  of  life,  and  its  spirit  is 
always  the  spirit  of  the  age. 

THERE  have  been  periods  of  our 
history  when  presidential  messages  were 
utterly  without  practical  significance. 

Constitutional  Government  in  the  U.  S. 


PITHY    SAYINGS 


I  WOULD  rather  belong  to  a  poor 
nation  that  was  free  than  to  a  rich 
nation  that  had  ceased  to  be  in  love 
with  liberty.  But  we  shall  not  be  poor 
if  we  love  liberty. 

Address   before  the  Southern   Commercial  Con- 
gress, October  27,  1913. 

GOSSIPS  are  only  sociologists  upon 
a  mean  and  petty  scale. 

WE  should  have  passed  by  this  time 
the  Homeric  stage  of  mind — should 
have  heroes  suited  to  our  age. 


COULD  any  man  hesitate  to  say  that 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  more  human 
than  William  Lloyd  Garrison? 

WE  are  glad  to  see  earnest  men 
laugh.  It  breaks  the  strain. 

On  Being  Human. 


36  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

CERTAINLY  modern  individualism 
has  much  about  it  that  is  hateful,  too 
hateful  to  live. 


IT  should  be  the  end  of  government 
to  assist  in  accomplishing  the  objects 
of  organized  society. 

The  State. 


WOMAN  SUFFRAGE 


WOMAN    SUFFRAGE  39 

THE    astonishing    thing    about    the     Ra?id 
o  &  growth 

movement   which    you    represent 

is,  not  that  it  has  grown  so  slowly,  but 
that  it  has  grown  so  rapidly.  No 
doubt  for  those  who  have  been  a  long 
time  in  the  struggle,  like  your  honored 
president,  it  seems  a  long  and  arduous 
path  that  has  been  trodden,  but  when 
you  think  of  the  cumulating  force  of 
this  movement  in  recent  decades,  you 
must  agree  with  me  that  it  is  one  of 
the  most  astonishing  tides  in  modern 
history.  Two  generations  ago,  no 
doubt  Madam  President  will  agree  with 
me  in  saying,  it  was  a  handful  of  wom- 
en who  were  fighting  this  cause.  Now 
it  is  a  great  multitude  of  women  who 
are  fighting  it. 

THE   whole   conception   of   govern- 
ment when  the  United  States  be- 
came a   Nation  was  a  mechanical   con- 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Tech 
diffia 


n  ical 
ilties 


Will 
prevail 


ception  of  government,  and  the  me- 
chanical conception  of  government 
which  underlay  it  was  the  Newtonian 
theory  of  the  universe. 

THERE  was  a  time  when  nobody 
but  a  lawyer  could  know  enough 
to  run  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  and  a  distinguished  English 
publicist  once  remarked,  speaking  of 
the  complexity  of  the  American  Gov- 
ernment, that  it  was  no  proof  of  the 
excellence  of  the  American  Constitution 
that  it  had  been  successfully  operated, 
because  the  Americans  could  run  any 
constitution.  But  there  have  been  a 
great  many  technical  difficulties  in  run- 
ning it. 

IT   is   going  to   prevail,    and   that    is 
a    very    superficial     and     ignorant 
view  of  it  which   attributes  it  to  mere 


WOMAN    SUFFRAGE  41 

social  unrest.  It  is  not  merely  be- 
cause the  women  are  discontented.  It 
is  because  the  women  have  seen  visions 
of  duty,  and  that  is  something  which  we 
not  only  cannot  resist,  but,  if  we  be 
true  Americans,  we  do  not  wish  to 
resist.  America  took  its  origin  in  vis- 
ions of  the  human  spirit,  in  aspirations 
for  the  deepest  sort  of  liberty  of  the 
mind  and  of  the  heart,  and  as  visions 
of  that  sort  come  up  to  the  sight  of 
those  who  are  spiritually  minded  in 
America,  America  comes  more  and 
more  into  her  birthright  and  into  the 
perfection  of  her  development. 

OUR  political  questions  have  ceased 
to  be  legal  questions.  They 
have  more  and  more  become  social 
questions,  questions  with  regard  to  the 
relations  of  human  beings  to  one  an- 
other— not  merely  their  legal  relations, 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

but  their  moral  and  spiritual   relations 
to  one  another. 

So  that  what  we  have  to  realize  in 
dealing  with  forces  of  this  sort  is 
that  we  are  dealing  with  the  substance 
of  life  itself. 


Be  patient 


I  HAVE  not  come  to  ask  you  to  be 
patient,  because  you  have  been, 
but  I  have  come  to  congratulate  you 
that  there  was  a  force  behind  you  that 
will  beyond  peradventure  be  triumph- 
ant, and  for  which  you  can  afford  a 
little  while  to  wait. 

Address  at  the  National  Women's  Suffrage  Con- 
vention   in    1916. 

THE  whole  art  and  practice  of  gov- 
ernment consists  not  in  moving  indi- 
viduals, but  in  moving  masses. 

Address  at  Atlantic  City,  September  8,  1916. 


THOUGHTS  ON  LITERA- 
TURE 


THOUGHTS    ON    LITERATURE 


SOME  books  live;  many  die;  where- 
in is  the  secret  of  immortality  ? 
Not  in  beauty  of  form,  nor  even  in 
force  of  passion.  We  might  say  of 
literature  what  Wordsworth  said  of 
poetry.  .  .  .  Poetry  has  the  easier 
immortality  because  it  has  the  easier 
accent  when  it  speaks,  because  its 
phrases  linger  in  our  ears  to  delight 
them,  because  its  truths  are  also  melo- 
dies. Prose  has  much  to  overcome, — 
its  plainness  of  visage,  its  less  musical 
accents,  its  homelier  turns  of  phrase. 
But  it  also  may  maintain  the  immortal 
essence  of  truth  and  seriousness  and 
high  thought. 

Mere   Literature,    1913. 

MUCH  the  most  pathetic  thought 
about  books  is  that  excellence  will  not 
save  them.  Their  fates  will  be  as 
whimsical  as  those  of  the  humankind 


THE    WTISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

which  produces  them.  Knaves  find  it 
as  easy  to  get  remembered  as  good 
men. 


Books  and 
friends 


THE  world  is  attracted  by  books  as 
each  man  is  attracted  by  his  several 
friends. 

The  Author  Himself. 


Praise 
of  your 
own  day 


GREAT  authors  are  not  often  men 
of  fashion.  Fashion  is  always 
a  harness  and  restraint,  whether  it  be 
fashion  in  dress  or  fashion  in  vice  or 
fashion  in  literary  art;  and  a  man  who 
is  bound  by  it  is  caught  and  formed  in 
a  fleeting  mode.  The  great  writers  are 
always  innovators. 

THE  praise  of  your  own  day  is  no 
absolute  disqualification;  but  it  may  be 
if  it  be  given  for  qualities  which  your 


THOUGHTS    ON    LITERATURE 


friends  are  the  first  to  admire,  for  'tis 
likely  they  will  also  be  the  last 

No  man  who  has  anything  to  say 
need  stop  and  bethink  himself  whom 
he  may  please  or  displease  in  the  say- 
ing of  it. 

An   Author's   Choice   of   Company. 

INDIVIDUALITY  does  not  consist  in 
the  use  of  the  very  personal  pronoun, 
I :  it  consists  in  tone,  in  method,  in 
attitude,  in  point  of  view. 

IT  is  best  for  the  author  to  be  born 
away  from  literary  centres,  or  to  be 
excluded  from  their  ruling  set  if  he 
be  born  in  them. 

IF  you  have  a  candid  and  well- 
informed  friend  among  city  lawyers, 
ask  him  where  the  best  masters  of  his 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

profession  are  bred, — in  the  city  or  in 
the  country.  He  will  reply  without 
hesitation,  "In  the  country."  You 
will  hardly  need  to  have  him  state  the 
reason. 


THE  idea  of  slavery  hovers  over 
(Gibbon's)  Decline  and  Fall.  Fancy 
a  stiffly  dressed  gentleman,  in  a  stiff 
chair,  slowly  writing  that  stiff  com- 
pilation in  a  stiff  hand:  it  is  enough 
to  stiffen  you  for  life. 

The  Author  Hints  elf. 


REMARKS  OF  THE 
EDUCATOR 


REMARKS    OF    THE    EDUCATOR 


1PITY  the  man  who  cannot  look 
back  to  those  delicious  sequestered 
places  from  which  we  first  saw  the 
world,  that  dear  covert  made  by 
mothers'  and  fathers'  love  and  kept  in- 
violable by  all  the  gentle  arts  of  guar- 
dian care. 

PRACTICAL  judgments  shift  from 
age  to  age,  but  principles  abide;  and 
more  stable  even  than  principles  are 
the  motives  which  simplify  and  en- 
noble life. 

The  Free  Life.  m^  „ 

IT  is  again  a  day  for  Shakespeare's 
spirit — a  day  more  various,  more  ar- 
dent, more  provoking  to  valor  and 
every  large  design,  even  than  "the 
spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth," 
when  all  the  world  seemed  new  . 


A  path- 
finder 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

LET  us  remind  ourselves  that  to  be 
human  is,  for  one  thing,  to  speak  and 
act  with  a  certain  note  of  genuineness, 
a  quality  mixed  of  spontaneity  and 
intelligence. 

No  man  is  genuine  who  is  forever 
trying  to  pattern  his  life  after  the  lives 
of  other  people. 

MAN  is  much  more  than  a  "rational 
being,"  and  lives  more  by  sympathies 
and  impressions  than  by  conclusions. 

KEEP  but  your  eyes  alert  and  your 
ears  quick,  as  you  move  among  men, 
and  among  books,  and  you  shall  find 
yourself  possessed  at  last  of  a  new 
sense,  the  sense  of  the  pathfinder. 

THE  art  of  being  human  begins  with 
the  practice  of  being  genuine,  and 


REMARKS  OF  THE  EDUCATOR          53 

following  standards   of   conduct   which 
the  world  has  tested. 


WE  shall  need  a  new  Renaissance, 
ushered  in  by  a  new  "human- 
istic"  movement,  in  which  we  shall 
add  to  our  present  minute,  introspec- 
tive study  of  ourselves,  our  jails,  our 
slums,  our  nerve-centres,  our  shifts  to 
live,  almost  as  morbid  as  mediaeval 
religion,  a  rediscovery  of  the  round 
world,  and  of  man's  place  in  it,  now 
that  its  face  has  changed. 

On  Being  Human. 


GOVERNMENTAL  MAXIMS 


GOVERNMENTAL    MAXIMS 


GOVERNMENT,  in  its  last  analysis, 
is  organized  force.  Not  necessarily  or 
invariably  armed  force.  ...  It  is, 
however,  organized  to  rule,  to  domi- 
nate. 

IN  the  case  of  any  particular  govern- 
ment, the  force  upon  which  the 
authority  of  its  officers  rests  may  never 
once  for  generations  together  take  the 
shape  of  armed  force.  Happily  there 
are  in  our  own  day  many  governments, 
and  those  among  the  most  prominent, 
which  seldom  coerce  their  subjects, 
seeming  in  their  tranquil,  noiseless 
operations  to  run  of  themselves  .  .  . 
But  there  is  force  behind  them  none 
the  less  because  it  never  shows  itself. 

THE    better    governments    of    our 
day — those  which  rest,  not  upon 
the   armed  strength   of   governors,   but 


58  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

upon  the  free  consent  of  the  governed 
are  founded  upon  constitutions  and 
laws  whose  source  and  sanction  are  the 
habit  of  communities.  The  force  which 
they  embody  is  not  the  force  of  a 
dominant  dynasty  or  of  a  prevalent 
minority,  but  the  force  of  an  agreeing 
majority.  And  the  overwhelming  na- 
ture of  this  force  is  evidently  the  fact 
that  the  minority  very  seldom  chal- 
lenges its  exercise.  It  is  latent  just 
because  it  is  understood  to  be  omnipo- 
tent. 

THERE  is  force  behind  the  au- 
thority of  the  elected  magistrate, 
no  less  than  behind  that  of  the  usurp- 
ing despot,  a  much  greater  force 
behind  the  President  of  the  United 
States  than  behind  the  Czar  of  Russia. 
The  difference  lies  in  the  display  of 
coercive  power.  Physical  force  is  the 


GOVERNMENTAL    MAXIMS 


prop  of  both,  though  in  the  one  it  is 
the  last,  while  in  the  other  it  is  the 
first,  resort. 

IT  is  common  nowadays  when  re- 
ferring to  the  affairs  of  the  most 
progressive  nations  to  speak  of  "gov- 
ernment by  public  opinion."  .  .  .  But 
no  one  intends  such  expressions  to  con- 
ceal the  fact  that  the  majority  .  .  . 
does  not  prevail  because  the  minority 
are  convinced,  but  because  they  out- 
numbered and  have  against  them  not 
the  "popular  voice"  only,  but  the 
"popular  power"  as  well, — that  it  is 
the  potential  might  rather  than  the 
wisdom  of  the  majority  which  gives 
it  its  right  to  rule. 

SOCIETY  is  compounded  of  the  com- 
mon habit  and  is  an  evolution  of  ex- 
perience, an  interlaced  growth  of  tena- 


6o 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


cious  relationships,  a  compact,  living, 
organic  whole,  structural,  not  me- 
chanical. 

OLIGARCHY  is  even  more  hateful  to 
civil  liberty,  is  even  a  greater  hind- 
rance to  healthful  civil  life  than 
tyranny. 


Degen~ 
eracy 


DEMOCRACY,  too,  has  its  old 
age  of  degeneracy — an  old  age 
in  which  it  loses  its  early  respect  for 
law,  its  first  "amiability"  of  mutual  con- 
cession. It  breaks  out  into  license  and 
anarchy,  and  none  but  a  Caesar  can 
bring  it  back  to  reason  and  order. 

SOCIETY  is  not  the  organism  it  once 
was, — its  members  are  given  freer  play, 
fuller  opportunity  for  origination;  but 
its  organic  character  is  again  promi- 
nent. 

The  State. 


GOVERNMENTAL    MAXIMS 


THERE  are  illegitimate  means  by 
which  the  President  may  influ- 
ence the  action  of  Congress.  .  .  .  He 
may  overbear  Congress  by  arbitrary 
acts  which  ignore  the  laws  or  virtually 
override  them.  .  .  .  Such  things  are 
not  only  deeply  immoral,  they  are  de- 
structive of  the  fundamental  under; 
standings  of  constitutional  govern- 
ment. .  .  .  They  are  sure,  more- 
over, in  a  country  of  free  public  opin- 
ion, to  bring  their  own  punishment,  to 
destroy  both  the  fame  and  the  power 
of  the  man  who  dares  to  practice 
them. 

THE  nation  as  a  whole  has  chosen 
the  President,  and  is  conscious 
that  it  has  no  other  political  spokes- 
man. His  is  the  only  national  voice 
in  affairs.  Let  him  once  win  the  ad- 
miration and  confidence  of  the  coun- 


62 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


try,  and  no  other  single  force  can 
withstand  him,  no  combination  of 
forces  will  easily  overpower  him. 


Leader  of 
his  party 


A  PRESIDENT  whom  the  nation 
trusts  can  not  only  lead  it, 
but  form  it  to  his  own  views.  .  .  . 
He  may  be  both  the  leader  of  his 
party  and  the  leader  of  the  nation,  or 
he  may  be  one  or  the  other.  If  he 
lead  the  nation,  his  party  can  hardly 
resist  him.  His  office  is  anything  he 
has  the  sagacity  and  force  to  make  it. 


IF  the  matter  be  looked  at  a  little 
more  closely,  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  office  of  the  President,  as  we  have 
used  it  and  developed  it,  really  does 
not  demand  actual  experience  in  affairs 
so  much  as  particular  qualities  of  mind 
and  character  which  we  are  at  least 


GOVERNMENTAL    MAXIMS 


as  likely  to  find  outside  the  ranks  of  our 
public  men  as  within  them. 

IF  the  President  has  personal  force 
and  cares  to  exercise  it  there  is 
this  tremendous  difference  between  his 
messages  and  the  views  of  any  other 
citizen,  either  outside  Congress  or  with- 
in it:  that  the  whole  country  reads 
them  and  feels  that  the  writer  speaks 
with  an  authority  and  a  responsibility 
which  the  people  themselves  have  given 
him. 

r  I  ^HE  President  can  never  again  be 
A  the  mere  domestic  figure  he  has 
been  throughout  so  large  a  part  of 
our  history  .  .  .  Our  President  must 
always  henceforth  be  one  of  the  great 
powers  of  the  world,  whether  he  act 
greatly  and  wisely  or  not,  and  the  best 


64 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


statesmen  we  can  produce  will  be  needed 
to  fill  the  office  of  secretary  of  state. 
Constitutional  Government  in  the  United  States. 


Kaiser's 
powers 


T  I  iHE  constitutional  prerogatives  of 
A  the  German  Emperor  are  of 
the  most  eminent  kind.  Unlike  other 
presidents,  he  is  irresponsible:  he  can- 
not be  removed.  .  .  .  He  has,  in 
brief,  to  the  fullest  extent,  both  the 
executive  and  the  representative  func- 
tions now  characteristic  of  the  head  of 
a  powerful  constitutional  state.  .  .  . 
Adding,  as  he  does,  to  his  powers  as 
hereditary  president  of  the  Empire  his 
commanding  privileges  as  king  of  Prus- 
sia ...  he  possesses  no  slight  claim 
to  be  regarded  as  the  most  powerful 
ruler  of  our  time. 


GOVERNMENTAL    MAXIMS 


THE  State  is  no  more  an  evil  than 
is  society  itself.  It  is  the 
organic  body  of  society:  without  it 
society  would  be  hardly  more  than  a 
mere  abstraction.  If  the  name  had 
not  been  restricted  to  a  single,  nar- 
row, extreme,  and  radically  mistaken 
class  of  thinkers,  we  ought  all  to  re- 
gard ourselves  and  to  act  as  socialists, 
believers  in  the  wholesomeness  and 
beneficence  of  the  body  politic. 

THE  schemes  which  Socialists  have 
proposed  society  cannot  accept 
and  live,  and  no  scheme  which  involves 
the  complete  control  of  the  individual 
by  government  can  be  devised  which 
differs  from  theirs  very  much  for  the 
better. 


66 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


case  for  society  stands  thus: 
JL  the  individual  must  be  assured 
the  best  means,  the  best  and  fullest 
opportunities,  for  complete  self-devel- 
opment. In  no  other  way  can  society 
itself  gain  variety  and  strength. 


GOT 
inst 


<ern- 
t  an 
rument 


SOCIETY,  it  must  always  be  re- 
membered, is  vastly  bigger  and 
more  important  than  its  instrument, 
government.  Government  should  serve 
society,  by  no  means  rule  or  dominate 
it.  Government  should  not  be  made 
an  end  in  itself;  it  is  a  means  only, — 
a  means  to  be  freely  adapted  to  ad- 
vance the  best  interests  of  the  social 
organism.  The  state  exists  for  the 
sake  of  society,  not  society  for  the 
sake  of  the  state. 

The  State. 


GOVERNMENTAL    MAXIMS 


WE  have  learnt  that  it  is  pent- 
up  feelings  that  are  danger- 
ous, whispered  purposes  that  are  revo- 
lutionary, covert  follies  that  warp  and 
poison  the  mind;  that  the  wisest  thing 
to  do  with  a  fool  is  to  encourage  him 
to  hire  a  hall  and  discourse  to  his 
fellow-citizens.  Nothing  chills  non- 
sense like  exposure  to  the  air. 


ACTION  is  very  sobering  to  opin- 
ion. It  is  one  thing  to  advocate 
reforms :  it  is  quite  another  to  formu- 
late them.  Many  an  ardent  and 
burdensome  reformer  would  be  silenced 
and  put  to  better  thinking  if  he  were 
obliged  to  express  his  reform  in  the 
exact  words,  of  a  workable  statute;  and 
many  a  statute  which  amateurs  may 
think  eminently  workable  turns  out  im- 
possible of  execution. 


68 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


ARE  the  United  States  a  commun- 
ity? In  some  things,  yes;  in 
many  things,  no.  ...  It  would  be 
hard  to  frame  any  single  generalization 
which  would  be  true  of  the  whole 
United  States,  whether  it  were  social, 
economic  or  political. 


The 
States 


WE  have  multiplied  our  consti- 
tutional governments  by  the 
number  of  our  states,  and  have  set  up 
in  each  commonwealth  of  a  vast  union 
of  states  a  separate  constitutional  gov- 
ernment to  which  is  intrusted  the  regu- 
lation of  all  the  ordinary  relations  of 
citizens  to  each  other. 


THE  Government  of  the  United 
States  has  had  a  vital  and  normal  or- 
ganic growth  and  has  proved  itself 
eminently  adapted  to  express  the  chang- 


GOVERNMENTAL    MAXIMS 


ing  temper  and  purposes  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  from  age  to  age. 

THE  presidency  has  been  one  thing 
at  one  time,  another  at  another,  varying 
with  the  man  who  occupied  the  office 
and  with  the  circumstances  that  sur- 
rounded him. 

OUR  new  place  in  the  affairs  of  the 
world  has  since  that  year  of  transfor- 
mation (1898)  kept  the  President  at 
the  front  of  our  Government. 

WE  are  in  these  latter  days  apt  to 
be   very  impatient  of  literal   and   dog- 
matic   interpretations   "of    constitutional 
principle. 
Constitutional  Government  In  the  United  States. 

AS  a  matter  of  fact  the  President 
has    become    very    much    more. 
He  has  become  the  leader  of  his  party 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

and  the  guide  of  the  nation  in  political 
purpose,  and  therefore  in  legal  action. 
The  constitutional  structure  of  the  Gov- 
ernment has  hampered  and  limited  his 
action  in  these  significant  roles,  but  it 
has  not  prevented  it. 


The  unify- 
ng  force 


REATLY  as  the  practice  and  in- 
\J"  fluence  of  Presidents  have  va- 
ried, there  can  be  no  mistaking  the  fact 
that  we  have  grown  more  and  more 
inclined  ...  to  look  to  the  Presi- 
dent as  the  unifying  force  in  our 
complex  system,  the  leader  both  of  his 
party  and  of  the  nation.  To  do  so 
is  not  inconsistent  with  the  actual  .pro- 
visions of  the  Constitution. 

Constitutional  Government  in  the  United  States 
—Edition  of  1908. 


PROGRESSIVE  TENDENCIES 


PROGRESSIVE    TENDENCIES 


I  TELL  you,  the  so-called  radicalism 
of  our  times  is  simply  the  effort  of  na- 
ture to  release  the  generous  energies 
of  our  people.  This  great  American 
people  is  at  bottom  just,  virtuous,  and 
hopeful. 

IT  is  necessary  to  open  up  all  the 
processes  of  our  politics.  They 
have  been  too  secret,  too  complicated, 
too  roundabout;  they  have  consisted  too 
much  of  private  conferences,  of  secret 
understandings,  of  the  control  of  legis- 
lation by  men  who  were  not  legislators, 
but  who  stood  outside  and  dictated, 
controlling  oftentimes  by  very  question- 
able -means. 

WE  are  in  the  presence  of  a  new 
organization  of  society. 


74 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


The 
inventor 


The  refer- 
endum 


WE  have  changed  our  economic  con- 
ditions, absolutely,  from  top  to  bot- 
tom; and,  with  our  economic  society, 
the  organization  of  our  life. 

OF  course  I  am  not  saying  that  all 
invention  has  been  stopped  by 
the  growth  of  trusts,  but  I  think  it  is 
perfectly  clear  that  invention  in  many 
fields  has  been  discouraged,  that  in- 
ventors have  been  prevented  from 
reaping  the  full  fruits  of  their  ingenuity 
and  industry,  and  that  mankind  has 
been  deprived  of  many  comforts  and 
conveniences,  as  well  as  of  the  oppor- 
tunity of  buying  at  lower  prices. 

1MET   a   man   the   other   day   who 
thought  that  the  referendum  was 
some  kind  of  animal  because  it  had  a 
Latin    name.     But    most    of    us    know 
and  are  deeply  interested.     Why?     Be- 


PROGRESSIVE    TENDENCIES 


cause  we  have  felt  that  in  too  many 
instances  our  Government  did  not  repre- 
sent us,  and  we  have  said:  uWe  have  to 
have  a  key  to  the  door  of  our  own 
house."  The  initiative  and  referen- 
dum and  the  recall  afford  such  a  key  to 
our  own  premises. 

IT  is  part  of  the  indictment  against 
the  protective  policy  of  the  United 
States  that  it  has  weakened  and  not 
enhanced  the  vigor  of  our  people.  .  .  . 
Think  of  it:  a  nation  full  of  genius 
and  yet  paralyzed  by  timidity! 

I  HAVE  lived  in  a  state  that  was 
owned  by  a  series  of  corpora- 
tions. They  handed  it  about.  It  was 
at  one  time  owned  by  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad.  Then  it  was  owned 
by  the  Public  Service  Corporation.  It 
was  owned  by  the  Public  Service  Cor- 


76 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


poration  when  I  was  admitted,  and 
that  corporation  has  been  resentful  ever 
since  that  I  interfered  with  its  tend- 
ency. But  I  really  did  not  see  any 
reason  why  the  people  should  give  up 
their  own  residence  to  so  small  a  body 
of  men  to  monopolize. 


Control- 
ling class 


No  country  can  afford  to  have,  its 
prosperity  originated  by  a  small  con- 
trolling class.  The  treasure  of  America 
does  not  lie  in  the  brains  of  the  small 
body  of  men  now  in  control  of  the 
great  enterprises. 

The  New  Freedom. 


Abolish 
privilege 


WE  must  abolish  everything  that 
bears  even  the  semblance  of 
privilege  or  of  any  kind  of  artificial 
advantage,  and  put  our  business  men 
and  producers  under  the  stimulation  of 
a  constant  necessity  to  be  efficient,  eco- 


PROGRESSIVE    TENDENCIES 


nomical,  and  enterprising,  masters  of 
competitive  supremacy,  better  workers 
and  merchants  than  any  in  the  world. 

First  Address  to  Congress. 

ANEW  economic  society  has 
sprung  up,  and  we  must  effect 
a  new  set  of  adjustments.  We  must 
not  pit  power  against  weakness.  The 
employer  is  generally  ...  a  power- 
ful group;  and  yet  the  workingman 
when  dealing  with  his  employer  is 
still,  under  our  existing  law,  an  indi- 
vidual. 

AMERICAN  industry  is  not  free, 
as  once  it  was  free;  American 
enterprise  is  not  free;  the  man  with 
only  a  little  capital  is  finding  it  harder 
to  get  into  the  field,  more  and  more 
impossible  to  compete  with  the  big 
fellow.  Why?  Because  the  laws  of 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Tariff 
revised 


this  country  do  not  prevent  the  strong 
from  crushing  the  weak. 

The  New  Freedom. 

SO  things  stood  when  the  Demo- 
cratic Party  came  into  power. 
How  do  they  stand  now?  Alike  in  the 
domestic  field  and  in  the  wide  field  of 
the  commerce  of  the  world,  American 
business  and  life  and  industry  have 
been  set  free  to  move  as  they  never 
moved  before. 

The  tariff  has  been  revised,  not  on 
the  principle  of  repelling  foreign  trade, 
but  upon  the  principle  of  encouraging 
it.  ...  American  energies  are  now 
directed  towards  the  markets  of  the 
world. 

The  laws  against  trusts  have  been 
clarified  by  definition,  with  a  view  to 
making  it  plain  that  they  were  not 
directed  against  big  business  but  only 


PROGRESSIVE    TENDENCIES 


against  unfair  business  and  the  pre- 
tense of  competition  where  there  was 
none;  and  a  Trade  Commission  has 
been  created  with  powers  of  guidance 
and  accommodation  which  have  re- 
lieved business  men  of  unfounded  fears 
and  set  them  upon  the  road  of  hope- 
ful and  confident  enterprise. 

By  the  Federal  Reserve  Act  the  sup- 
ply of  currency  at  the  disposal  of  active 
business  has  been  rendered  elastic. 

Effective  measures  have  been  taken 
for  the  re-creation  of  an  American  mer- 
chant marine  and  the  revival  of  the 
American  carrying  trade  indispensable 
to  our  emancipation  from  the  control 
which  foreigners  have  so  long  exercised 
over  the  opportunities,  the  routes,  and 
the  methods  of  our  commerce  with 
other  countries. 

For  the  farmers  of  the  country  we 
have  virtually  created  commercial 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

credit,  by  means  of  the  Federal  Re- 
serve Act  and  the  Rural  Credits  Act. 
They  now  have  the  standing  of  other 
business  men  in  the  money  market. 

We  have  effected  the  emancipation  of 
the  children  of  the  country  by  releasing 
them  from  hurtful  labor.  We  have  in- 
stituted a  system  of  national  aid  in 
the  building  of  highroads  such  as  the 
country  has  been  feeling  after  for  a 
century.  .  .  . 

A  new  age,  an  age  of  revolutionary 
change,  needs  new  purposes  and  new 
ideas. 

.  .  .  I  am  the  candidate  of  a  party, 
but  I  am  above  all  things  else  an 
American  citizen.  I  neither  seek  the 
favor  nor  fear  the  displeasure  of  that 
small  alien  element  amongst  us  which 
puts  loyalty  to  any  foreign  power  be- 
fore loyalty  to  the  United  States. 

We     have     undertaken     these     many 


PROGRESSIVE    TENDENCIES 


years  to  play  big  brother  to  the  repub- 
lics of  this  hemisphere.  This  is  the  day 
of  our  test  whether  we  mean,  or  have 
ever  meant,  to  play  that  part  for  our 
own  benefit  wholly  or  also  for  theirs. 
Upon  the  outcome  of  that  test  (its  out- 
come in  their  minds,  not  in  ours)  de- 
pends every  relationship  of  /the  United 
States  with  Latin  America,  whether  in 
politics  or  in  commerce  and  enterprise. 
.  .  .  The  nations  of  the  world  must 
unite  in  joint  guarantees  that  whatever 
is  done  to  disturb  the  whole  world's  life 
must  first  be  tested  in  the  court  of  the 
whole  world's  opinion  before  it  is  at- 
tempted. 

We  can  no  longer  indulge  our  tra- 
ditional provincialism.  We  are  to  play 
a  leading  part  in  the  world-  drama 
whether  we  wish  it  or  not.  We  shall 
lend,  not  borrow;  act  for  ourselves, 
not  imitate  or  follow;  organize  and 


82  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

initiate,  not  peep  about  merely  to  see 
where  we  may  get  in. 

We  have  put  all  kinds  of  unfair  com- 
petition under  the  ban  and  penalty  of 
the  law.  We  have  barred  monopoly.  .  . 

.  .  .  The  day  of  Little  American- 
ism, with  its  narrow  horizons,  when 
methods  of  "protection"  and  industrial 
nursing  were  the  chief  study  of  our 
provincial  statesmen,  are  past  and  gone 
and  that  a  day  of  enterprise  has  at 
last  dawned  for  the  United  States  whose 
field  is  the  wide  world. 

Speech  of  Acceptance  on  being  offered  the  nomi- 
nation for  President  by  the  ^Democratic 
Party,  September  2,  1916. 


AMERICANISM 


AMERICANISM 


THE  vitality  of  America  lies  in  the 
brains,  the  energies,  the  enter- 
prise of  the  people  throughout  the 
land;  in  the  efficiency  of  their  factories 
and  in  the  richness  of  the  fields  that 
stretch  beyond  the  borders  of  the  town; 
in  the  wealth  which  they  extract  from 
nature  and  originate  for  themselves 
through  the  inventive  genius  charac- 
teristic of  all  free  American  communi- 
ties. That  is  the  wealth  of  America, 
and  if  America  discourages  the  local- 
ity, the  community,  the  self-contained 
town,  she  will  kill  the  nation. 

The  New  Freedom. 

WE  have  built  up,  moreover,  a 
great  system  of  government, 
which  has  stood  through  a  long  age  as 
in  many  respects  a  model  for  those 
who  seek  to  set  liberty  upon  founda- 
tions that  will  endure  against  fortui- 


86 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


No  guar- 
dianship 


tous  change,  against  storm  and  acci- 
dent. Our  life  contains  every  great 
thing,  and  contains  it  in  rich  abun- 
dance. 

Constitutional  Government  in  the  United  States. 

AMERICA  is  never  going  to  submit 
to  guardianship.  America  is  never  go- 
ing to  choose  thralldom  instead  of 
freedom. 

THERE  are  tasks  awaiting  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States  which  it 
cannot  perform  until  every  pulse  of  that 
Government  beats  in  unison  with  the 
needs  and  the  desires  of  the  whole 
body  of  the  American  people. 

IT  is  one  of  the  glories  of  our  land 
that  nobody  is  able  to  '  predict  from 
what  family,  from  what  region,  from 
what  race  even,  the  leaders  of  the 
country  are  going  to  come. 

The  New  Freedom. 


erson 


AMERICANISM  87 

THE  President  of  the  United  States     Isa 
per* 
is  a  person,  not  a  mere  depart- 
ment of  the   Government  hailing  Con- 
gress    from    some    isolated    island    of 
jealous    power,    sending    messages,    not 
speaking   naturally   and   with    his    own 
voice — that  he  is  a  human  being  trying 
to  cooperate  with  other  human  beings 
in  a  common  service. 

First  Address  to  Congress,  1913. 

WE  are  participants,  whether  we  Our  affair 
would  or  not,  in  the  life  of 
the  world.  The  interests  of  all  nations 
are  our  own  also.  We  are  partners 
with  the  rest.  What  affects  mankind  is 
inevitably  our  affair  as  well  as  the 
affair  of  the  nations  of  Europe  and  of 
Asia. 

And  the  lesson  which  the  shock  of 
being  taken  by  surprise  in  a  matter  so 
deeply  vital  to  all  the  nations  of  the 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

world  has  made  poignantly  clear  is, 
that  the  peace  of  the  world  must  hence- 
forth depend  upon  a  new  and  more 
wholesome  diplomacy.  Only  when  the 
great  nations  of  the  world  have  reached 
some  sort  of  agreement  as  to  what  they 
hold  to  be  fundamental  to  their  com- 
mon interest,  and  as  to  some  feasible 
method  of  acting  in  concert  when  any 
nation  or  group  of  nations  seeks  to  dis- 
turb those  fundamental  things,  can  we 
feel  that  civilization  is  at  last  in  a  way 
of  justifying  its  existence  and  claiming 
to  be  finally  established.  It  is  clear 
that  nations  must  in  the  future  be  gov- 
erned by  the  same  high  code  of  honor 
that  we  demand  of  individuals.  .  .  . 
\ye  believe  these  fundamental  things : 

mental  .\ 

things  First,    that    every    people    has    a    right 

to  choose  the  sovereignty  under  which 
they  shall  live.  Like  other  nations,  we 
have  ourselves  no  doubt  once  and  again 


AMERICANISM 


offended  against  that  principle  when 
for  a  little  while  controlled  by  selfish 
passion,  as  our  franker  historians  have  ' 
been  honorable  enough  to  admit;  but  it 
has  become  more  and  more  our  rule  of 
life  and  action.  Second,  that  the  small 
states  of  the  world  have  a  right  to  en- 
joy the  same  respect  for  their  sov- 
ereignty and  for  their  territorial  integ- 
rity that  great  and  powerful  nations 
expect  and  insist  upon.  And,  third, 
that  the  world  has  a  right  to  be  free 
from  every  disturbance  of  its  peace  that 
has  its  origin  in  aggression  and  dis- 
regard of  the  rights  of  peoples  and 
nations. 

There  is  nothing  that  the  United 
States  wants  for  itself  that  any  other 
nation  has.  We  are  willing,  on  the 
contrary,  to  limit  ourselves  along  with 
them  to  a  prescribed  course  of  duty 
and  respect  for  the  rights  of  others 


9O  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

which  will  check  any  selfish  passion  of 
our  own,  as  it  will  check  any  aggressive 
impulse  of  theirs.  .  .  . 

Our  interest  is  only  in  peace  and  its 
future  guarantees.  Second,  an  universal 
association  of  the  nations  to  maintain 
the  inviolate  security  of  the  highway 
of  the  seas  for  the  common  and  un- 
hindered use  of  all  the  nations  of  the 
world,  and  to  prevent  any  war  begun 
either  contrary  to  treaty  covenants  or 
without  warning  and  full  submission  of 
the  causes  to  the  opinion  of  the  world, 
— a  virtual  guarantee  of  territorial  in- 
tegrity and  political  independence. 

.  .  .  God  grant  that  the  dawn  of 
that  day  of  frank  dealing  and  of  set- 
tled peace,  concord,  and  cooperation 
may  be  near  at  hand! 

"American  Principles,"  address  before  the  First 
Annual  Assemblage  of  the  League  to  En- 
force Peace,  May  27,  1916. 


AMERICANISM 


THERE  are  two  theories  of  gov- 
ernment that  have  been  con- 
tending with  each  other  ever  since  gov- 
ernment began.  One  of  them  is  the 
theory  which  in  America  is  associated 
with  the  name  of  a  very  great  man, 
Alexander  Hamilton.  A  great  man, 
but,  in  my  judgment,  not  a  great 
American.  He  did  not  think  in  terms 
of  American  life.  Hamilton  believed 
that  the  only  people  who  could  under- 
stand government,  and  therefore  the 
only  people  who  were  qualified  to  con- 
duct it,  were  the  men  who  had  the 
biggest  financial  stake  in  the  country 
and  in  the  enterprises  of  the  country. 
That  theory,  though  few  have  now  the 
hardihood  to  profess  it  openly,  has  been 
the  working  theory  upon  which  our 
Government  has  lately  been  conducted. 
It  is  astonishing  how  persistent  it  is. 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

THE  masters  of  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  are  the  combined 
capitalists  and  manufacturers  of  the 
United  States. 


Providing 
prosperity 


Rejects 
trustee 
theory 


THE  Government  of  the  United 
States  at  present  is  a  foster-child  of  the 
"special  interests." 

NOTHING  could  be  a  greater  de- 
parture from  original  Ameri- 
canism, from  faith  in  the  ability  of  a 
confident,  resourceful,  and  independent 
people,  than  the  discouraging  doctrine 
that  somebody  has  got  to  provide  pros- 
perity for  the  rest  of  us. 

1AM   one   of  those   who   absolutely 
reject     the     trustee     theory,     the 
guardianship    theory.    ...    I    suspect 
that   the   people    of   the   United   States 
understand    their    own    interests    better 


AMERICANISM 


than  any  group  of  men  in  the  confines 
of  the  country  understand  them.  The 
men  who  are  sweating  blood  to  get 
their  foothold  in  the  world  of  endeavor 
understand  the  conditions  of  business 
in  the  United  States  very  much  better 
than  the  men  who  have  arrived  and 
are  at  the  top. 

THE  government  of  our  country 
cannot  be  lodged  in  any  special  class. 

THE  policy  of  a  great  nation  cannot 
be  tied  up  with  any  particular  set  of 
interests. 

WE  have  got  to  relieve  our  Govern- 
ment from  the  domination  of  special 
classes. 

I  BELIEVE,  as  I  believe  in  nothing 
else,  in  the  average  integrity  and  the 


94 


THE    WISDOM   OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


average  intelligence  of  the  American 
people,  and  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
intelligence  of  America  can  be  put  into 
commission  anywhere. 


No  ivards 
u-anted 


IF  any  part  of  our  people  want  to  be 
wards,  if  they  want  to  have  guar- 
dians put  over  them,  if  they  want  to 
be  taken  care  of,  if  they  want  to  be 
children,  patronized  by  the  Govern- 
ment, why,  I  am  sorry,  because  it  will 
sap  the  manhood  of  America.  But  I 
don't  believe  they  do. 

The  New  Freedom. 


No 
groups 


You  cannot  dedicate  yourself  to 
America  unless  you  become  in  every 
respect  and  with  every  purpose  of  your 
will  thorough  Americans. 

You  cannot  become  thorough  Ameri- 


AMERICANISM 


cans  if  you  think  of  yourselves 
in  groups.  A  man  who  thinks  of  him- 
self as  belonging  to  a  particular  na- 
tional group  in  America  has  not  yet 
become  an  American. 


AMERICA  must  have  this  conscious- 
ness, that  on  all  sides  it  touches  elbows 
and  touches  hearts  with  all  the  nations 
of  mankind. 


THE  example  of  America  must  be 
a  special  example.  The  exam- 
ple of  America  must  be  the  example  not 
merely  of  peace  because  it  will  not 
fight,  but  of  peace  because  peace  is  the 
healing  and  elevating  influence  of  the 
world,  and  strife  is  not.  There  is  such 
a  thing  as  a  man  being  too  proud  to 
fight.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  a 
nation  being  so  right  that  it  does  not 


96 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


need  to   convince   others  by   force   that 
it  is  right. 

Address  to   Newly  Naturalized  Citizens. 


Oath  of 
allegiance 


YOU  have  just  taken  an  oath  of 
allegiance  to  the  United  States. 
Of  allegiance  to  whom?  Of  alle- 
giance to  no  one,  unless  it  be  God — 
certainly  not  of  allegiance  to  those  who 
temporarily  represent  this  great  Gov- 
ernment. You  have  taken  an  oath  of 
allegiance  to  a  great  ideal,  to  a  great 
body  of  principles,  to  a  great  hope  of 
the  human  race.  You  have  said,  "We 
are  going  to  America  not  only  to  earn 
a  living,  not  only  to  seek  the  things 
which  it  was  more  difficult  to  obtain 
where  we  were  born,  but  to  help  for- 
ward the  great  enterprises  of  the  human 
spirit — to  let  men  know  that  every- 
where in  the  world  there  are  men  who 
will  cross  strange  oceans  and  go  where 


AMERICANISM 


a  speech  is  spoken  which  is  alien  to 
them  if  they  can  but  satisfy  their  quest 
for  what  their  spirits  crave;  knowing 
that  whatever  the  speech  there  is  but 
one  longing  and  utterance  of  the  human 
heart,  and  that  is  for  liberty  and  jus- 
tice." And  while  you  bring  all  coun- 
tries with  you,  you  come  with  a  pur- 
pose of  leaving  all  other  countries  be- 
hind you. 

THIS  is  the  only  country  in  the 
world  which  experiences  this 
constant  and  repeated  rebirth.  Other 
countries  depend  upon  the  multiplication 
of  their  own  native  people.  This  coun- 
try is  constantly  drinking  strength  out 
of  new  sources  by  the  voluntary  asso- 
ciation with  it  of  great  bodies  of  strong 
men  and  forward-looking  women  out 
of  other  lands.  And  so  by  the  gift  of 
the  free  will  of  independent  people  it 


98  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

is  being  constantly  renewed  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  by  the  same 
process  by  which  it  was  originally 
created.  It  is  as  if  humanity  had  deter- 
mined to  see  to  it  that  this  great 
nation,  founded  for  the  benefit  of  hu- 
manity, should  not  lack  for  the  alle- 
giance of  the  people  of  the  world. 

No  man  that  does  not  see  visions 
will  ever  realize  any  high  hope  or 
undertake  any  high  enterprise. 

IT  was  but  an  historical  accident  no 
doubt  that  this  great  country  was 
called  the  "United  States" ;  yet  I  am 
very  thankful  that  it  has  that  word 
"United"  in  its  title,  and  the  man  who 
seeks  to  divide  man  from  man,  group 
from  group,  interest  from  interest  in 
this  great  Union  is  striking  at  its  very 
heart. 


AMERICANISM 


IF  I  have  in  any  degree  forgotten 
what  America  was  intended  for,  I  will 
thank  God  if  you  will  remind  me. 

Address,  Philadelphia,  May   19,   1915. 

I  WANT  to  belong  to  a  nation,  and 
I  am  proud  to  belong  to  a  nation  that 
knows  how  to  take  care  of  itself. 

THE  whole  stability  of  a  democratic 
polity  rests  upon  the  fact  that  every 
interest  is  every  man's  interest. 

THEN  there  arose  that  interesting 
figure,  the  immortal  figure  of  the  great 
Lincoln,  who  stood  up  declaring  that 
the  politicians,  the  men  who  had  gov- 
erned this  country,  did  not  see  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  people. 

As  a  university  president  I  learned 
that  the  men  who  dominate  our  manu- 


100 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


facturing  processes  could  not  conduct 
their  business  for  twenty-four  hours 
without  the  assistance  of  the  experts 
with  whom  the  universities  were  supply- 
ing him. 

The  New  Freedom. 


True 

Americans 


1  LISTENED  again  to  this  list  of 
the  dead  with  a  profound  interest 
because  of  the  mixture  of  the  names, 
for  the  names  bear  the  marks  of  the 
several  national  stocks  from  which 
these  men  came.  But  they  are  not 
Irishmen  or  Germans  or  Frenchmen 
or  Hebrews  or  Italians  any  more.  They 
were  not  when  they  went  to  Vera  Cruz ; 
they  were  Americans,  every  one  of 
them,  and  with  no  difference  in  their 
Americanism  because  of  the  stock  from 
which  they  came.  They  were  in  a 
peculiar  sense  of  our  blood,  and  they 
proved  it  by  showing  that  they  were 


AMERICANISM 


of  our  spirit — that  no  matter  what  their 
derivation,  no  matter  where  their  peo- 
ple came  from,  they  thought  and 
wished  and  did  the  things  that  were 
American;  and  the  flag  under  which 
they  served  was  a  flag  in  which  all  the 
blood  of  mankind  is  united  to  make 
a  free  nation. 

Address  delivered  at  the  Brooklyn  Navy  Yard, 
May  11,  1914. 

IN  two  particulars  of  vital  conse- 
quence this  bill  embodies  a  radi- 
cal departure  from  the  traditional  and 
long-established  policy  of  this  country, 
a  policy  in  which  our  people  have  con- 
ceived the  very  character  of  their  Gov- 
ernment to  be  expressed,  the  very  mis- 
sion and  spirit  of  the  nation  in  respect 
of  its  relations  to  the  peoples  of  the 
world  outside  their  borders.  It  seeks 
to  all  but  close  entirely  the  gates  of  asy- 


102  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

lum  which  have  always  been  open  to 
those  who  could  find  nowhere  else  the 
right  and  opportunity  of  constitutional 
agitation  for  what  they  conceived  to  be 
the  natural  and  inalienable  rights  of 
men;  and  it  excludes  those  to  whom  the 
opportunities  of  elementary  education 
have  been  denied,  without  regard  to 
their  character,  their  purposes,  or  their 
natural  capacity. 

...  In  this  bill  it  is  proposed  to 
turn  away  from  tests  of  character  and 
of  quality  and  impose  tests  which  ex- 
clude and  restrict.  .  .  . 

Restrictions  like  these,  adopted  earlier 
in  our  history  as  a  nation,  would  very 
materially  have  altered  the  course  and 
cooled  the  humane  ardors  of  our  poli- 
tics. The  right  of  political  asylum  has 
brought  to  this  country  many  a  man  of 
noble  character  and  elevated  purpose 
who  was  marked  as  an  outlaw  in  his 


AMERICANISM 


own  less   fortunate  land,  and  who  has 
yet   become    an    ornament    to    our    citi-  * 
zenship  and  to  our  public  councils. 

Message  to  Congress  disapproving  of  a  restric- 
tive immigration  bill. 

POLITICS,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
is  made  up  in  just  about  equal 
parts  of  comprehension  and  sympathy. 
No  man  ought  to  go  into  politics  who 
does  not  comprehend  the  -task  that  he 
is  going  to  attack.  .  .  .  After  he 
has  comprehended  it,  there  should 
come  into  his  mind  those  profound  im- 
pulses of  sympathy  which  connect  him 
with  the  rest  of  mankind,  for  politics  is 
a  business  of  interpretation,  and  no 
men  are  fit  for  it  who  do  not  see  and 
seek  more  than  their  own  advantage 
and  interest. 

.     .    .    The  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence    was,     indeed,     the     first     audible 


104  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

breath  of  liberty,  but  the  substance  of 
liberty  is  written  in  such  documents  as 
the  declaration  of  rights  attached,  for 
example,  to  the  first  constitution  of 
Virginia,  which  was  a  model  for  the 
similar  documents  read  elsewhere  into 
our  great  fundamental  charters.  That 
document  speaks  in  very  plain  terms. 
The  men  of  that  generation  did  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  every  people  has  a 
right  to  choose  its  own  forms  of  gov- 
ernment— not  once,  but  as  often  as  it 
pleases — and  to  accommodate  those 
forms  of  government  to  its  existing  in- 
terests and  circumstances.  Not  only 
to  establish  but  to  alter  is  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  self-government. 

No  man  can  boast  that  he  under- 
stands America.  No  man  can  boast 
that  he  has  lived  the  life  of  America, 
as  almost  every  man  who  sat  in  this 


AMERICANISM 


105 


hall  in  those  days  could  boast.  No 
man  can  pretend  that  except  by  com- 
mon counsel  he  can  gather  into  his 
consciousness  what  the  varied  life  of 
this  people  is.  The  duty  that  we  have 
to  keep  open  eyes  and  open  hearts 
and  accessible  understandings  is  a  very 
much  more  Difficult  duty  to  perform 
than  it  was  in  their  day.  ...  I  count 
it  a  fortunate  circumstance  that  almost 
all  the  windows  of  the  White  House 
and  its  offices  open  upon  unoccupied 
spaces  that  stretch  to  the  banks  of  the 
Potomac  and  then  out  into  Virginia  and 
on  to  the  heavens  themselves,  and  that 
as  I  sit  there  I  can  constantly  forget 
Washington  and  remember  the  United 
States.  Not  that  I  would  intimate  that 
all  of  the  United  States  lies  south  of 
Washington,  but  there  is  a  *  serious 
thing  back  of  my  thought.  If  you 
think  too  much  about  being  reflected, 


Looking 
from  the 
White 
House 


106  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

it  is  very  difficult  to  be  worth  reelect- 
ing. 

It  is  constantly  necessary  to  come 
away  from  Washington  and  renew  one's 
contact  with  the  people  who  do  not 
swarm  there,  who  do  not  ask  for  any- 
thing, but  who  do  trust  you  without 
their  personal  counsel  to  do  your  duty. 
Unless  a  man  gets  these  contacts  he 
grows  weaker  and  weaker.  He  needs 
them  as  Hercules  needed  the  touch  of 
mother  earth. 

"Understanding  America"  Delivered  at  Phila- 
delphia, Pa.,  on  the  occasion  of. the  rededica- 
tion  of  Congress  Hall,  October  25,  1913. 

T  I  ^HE  war  was  started  by  Germany. 
JL  Her  authorities  deny  that  they 
started  it,  but  I  am  willing  to  let  the 
statement  I  have  just  made  await  the 
verdict  of  history.  And  the  thing  that 
needs  to  be  explained  is  why  Germany 


AMERICANISM 


started  the  war.  Remember  what  the 
position  of  Germany  in  the  world  was 
— as  enviable  a  position  as  any  nation 
has  ever  occupied.  The  whole  world 
stood  at  admiration  of  her  wonderful 
intellectual  and  material  achievements. 
All  the  intellectual  men  of  the  world 
went  to  school  to  her.  As  a  university 
man  I  have  been  surrounded  by  men 
trained  in  Germany,  men  who  had  re- 
sorted to  Germany  because  nowhere 
else  could  they  get  such  thorough  and 
searching  training,  particularly  in  the 
principles  of  science  and  the  principles 
that  underlie  modern  material  achieve- 
ment. Her  men  of  science  had  made 
her  industries  perhaps  the  most  com- 
petent industries  of  the  world,  and  the 
label  "Made  in  Germany"  was  a  guar- 
antee of  good  workmanship  and  of 
sound  material.  She  had  access  to  all 
the  markets  of  the  world,  and  every 


io8 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


other  nation  who  traded  in  those  mar- 
kets   feared    Germany   because    of    her 
biecom-          effective  and  almost  irresistible  compe- 

pc  tit  ion  •    •  0111         i(i  •         1  »» 

tition.    She  had  a    place  in  the  sun. 

Why  was  she  not  satisfied?  What 
more  did  she  want?  .  There  was  noth- 
ing in  the  world  of  peace  that  she  did 
not  already  have  and  have  in  abun- 
dance. We  boast  of  the  extraordinary 
pace  of  American  advancement.  We 
show  with  pride  the  statistics  of  the 
increase  of  our  industries  and  of  the 
population  of  our  cities.  Well,  those 
statistics  did  not  match  the  recent  sta- 
tistics of  Germany.  Her  old  cities 
took  on  youth  and  grew  faster  than  any 
American  cities  ever  grew.  Her  old 
industries  opened  their  eyes  and  saw  a 
new  world  and  went  out  for  its  con- 
quest. And  yet  the  authorities  of  Ger- 
e  spirit  many  were  not  satisfied. 

I  believe  that  the  spirit  of  freedom 


AMERICANISM 


can  get  into  the  hearts  of  Germans  and 
find  as  fine  a  welcome  there  as  it  can 
find  in  any  other  hearts,  but  the  spirit 
of  freedom  does  not  suit  the  plans  of 
the  Pan-Germans.  Power  cannot  be 
used  with  concentrated  force  against 
free  peoples  if  it  is  used  by  free  peo- 
ple. 

While  we  are  fighting  for  freedom 
we  must  see,  among  other  things,  that 
labor  is  free;  and  that  means  a  number 
of  interesting  things.  It  means  not  only 
that  we  must  do  what  we  have  declared 
our  purpose  to  do,  see  that  the  con- 
ditions of  labor  are  not  rendered  more 
onerous  by  the  war,  but  also  that  we 
shall  see  to  it  that  the  instrumentalities 
by  which  the  conditions  of  labor  are  im- 
proved are  not  blocked  or  checked.  I 
believe  I  am  speaking  from  my  own 
experience  not  only,  but  from  the  experi- 
ence of  others  when  I  say  that  you  are 


IIO  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

reasonable  in  a  larger  number  of  cases 
than  the  capitalists.  We  claim  to  be  the 
greatest  democratic  people  in  the  world, 
and  democracy  means  first  of  all  that 
we  can  govern  ourselves.  If  our  men 
have  not  self-control,  then  they  are  not 
capable  of  that  great  thing  which  we 
call  democratic  government. 

Address  to  the  American  Federation  of  Labor 
Convention,  Buffalo,  New  York,  November 
12,  1917. 


HIS  little  hut  was  the  cradle  of 
JL  one  of  the  great  sons  of  men,  a 
man  of  singular,  delightful,  vital  genius 
who  presently  emerged  upon  the  great 
stage  of  the  nation's  history,  gaunt,  shy, 
ungainly,  but  dominant  and  majestic,  a 
natural  ruler  of  men,  himself  inevitably 
the  central  figure  of  the  great  plot. 
No  man  can  explain  this,  but  every  man 
can  see  how  it  demonstrates  the  vigor 


AMERICANISM 


of  democracy,  where  every  door  is  open, 
in  every  hamlet  and  countryside,  in  city 
and  wilderness  alike,  for  the  ruler  to 
emerge  when  he  will  and  claim  his  lead- 
ership in  the  free  life.  Such  are  the  au- 
thentic proofs  of  the  validity  and  vital- 
ity of  democracy. 

We  would  like  to  think  of  men  like 
Lincoln,  and  Washington  as  typical 
Americans,  but  no  man  can  be  typical 
who  is  so  unusual  as  these  great  men 
were.  It  was  typical  of  American  life 
that  it  should  produce  such  men  with 
supreme  indifference  as  to  the  manner 
in  which  it  produced  them,  and  as  read- 
ily here  in  this  hut  as  amidst  the  little 
circle  of  cultivated  gentlemen  to  whom 
Virginia  owed  so  much  in  leadership 
and  example.  And  Lincoln  and  Wash- 
ington were  typical  Americans  in  the 
use  they  made  of  their  genius.  But 
there  will  be  few  such  men  at  best,  and 


112  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

we  will  not  look  into  the  mystery  of 
how  and  why  they  come.  We  will  only 
keep  the  door  open  for  them  always, 
and  a  hearty  welcome, — after  we  have 
recognized  them. 

Passages    in    an    address    on    "Lincoln's    Begin- 
nings," delivered  September  4,   1916. 


FOR  HUMANITY 


FOR    HUMANITY 


WHAT  was  in  the  minds  of  the  men 
who  founded  America, — to  serve  the 
selfish  interests  of  America?  Do  you 
find  that  in  their  writings?  No;  to 
serve  the  cause  of  humanity,  to  bring 
liberty  to  mankind. 

The  New  Freedom. 

HUMANITY  can  be  welded  together 
only  by  love,  by  sympathy,  by  justice, 
not  by  jealousy  and  hatred.  I  am  sorry 
for  the  man  who  seeks  to  make  personal 
capital  out  of  the  passions  of  his  fel- 
low men. 

Address   to   Newly  Naturalized  Citizens,  Phila- 
delphia, May   10,    1916. 

WE  seek  to  maintain  the  dignity  and 
authority  of  the  United  States  only  be- 
cause we  wish  always  to  keep  our  great 
influence  unimpaired  for  the  uses  of 
liberty,  both  in  the  United  States  and 


n6 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


wherever  else  it  may  be  employed  for 
the  benefit  of  mankind. 

Address  on  the   Tampico  Incident,  made  before 
the  two  Houses  of  Congress,  April  20,  1914. 


Spirit  of 
unselfish- 
ness 


AMERICA  will  come  into  the  full 
light  of  the  day  when  all  shall 
know  that  she  puts  human  rights  above 
all  other  rights  and  that  her  flag  is  the 
flag  not  only  of  America  but  of  human- 
ity. 

What  other  great  people  has  de- 
voted itself  to  this  exalted  ideal?  To 
what  other  nation  in  the  world  can  all 
eyes  look  for  an  instant  sympathy  that 
thrills  the  whole  body  politic  when  men 
anywhere  are  fighting  for  their  rights? 
I  do  not  know  that  there  will  ever  be 
a  declaration  of  independence  and  of 
grievances  for  mankind,  but  I  believe 
that  if  any  such  document  is  ever  drawn 
it  will  be  drawn  in  the  spirit  of  the 
American  Declaration  of  Independence, 


FOR    HUMANITY 


and  that  America  has  lifted  high  the 
light  which  will  shine  unto  all  genera- 
tions and  guide  the  feet  of  mankind 
to  the  goal  of  justice  and  liberty  and 
peace. 

"Meaning   of  Liberty"  address  at  Independence 
Hall,  July  4,  1914. 

WE  have  gone  down  to  Mexico  to 
serve  mankind  if  we  can  find 
out  the  way.  We  do  not  want  to 
fight  the  Mexicans.  We  want  to 
serve  the  Mexicans  if  we  can,  because 
we  know  how  we  would  like  to  be  free, 
and  how  we  would  like  to  be  served  if 
there  were  friends  standing  by  in  such 
case  ready  to  serve  us.  A  war  of  ag- 
gression is  not  a  war  in  which  it  is  a 
proud  thing  to  die,  but  a  war  of  ser- 
vice is  a  thing  in  which  it  is  a  proud 
thing  to  die. 

Address  delivered  in  the  Brooklyn  Navy  Yard, 
May  11,  1914. 


n8 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Sample 
America* 


IT  ought  to  be  one  of  your  thoughts 
all  the  time  that  you  are  sample 
Americans — not  merely  sample  Navy 
men,  not  merely  sample  soldiers,  but 
sample  Americans — and  that  you  have 
the  point  of  view  of  America  with  re- 
gard to  her  Navy  and  her  Army;  that 
she  is  using  them  as  the  instruments  of 
civilization,  not  as  the  instruments  of 
aggression.  The  idea  of  America  is  to 
serve  humanity,  and  every  time  you  let 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  free  to  the  wind 
you  ought  to  realize  that  that  is  in 
itself  a  message  that  you  are  on  an 
errand  which  other  navies  have  some- 
times forgotten;  not  an  errand  of  con- 
quest, but  an  errand  of  service.  I  al- 
ways have  the  same  thought  when  I 
look  at  the  flag  of  the  United  States, 
for  I  know  something  of  the  history  of 
the  struggle  of  mankind  for  liberty. 
When  I  look  at  that  flag  it  seems  to 


FOR    HUMANITY 


me  as  if  the  white  stripes  were  strips  of 
parchment  upon  which  are  written  the 
rights  of  man,  and  the  red  stripes  the 
streams  of  blood  by  which  those  rights 
have  been  made  good.  Then  in  the 
little  blue  firmament  in  the  corner  have 
swung  out  the  stars  of  the  States  of 
the  American  Union.  So  it  is,  as  it 
were,  a  sort  of  floating  charter  that  has 
come  down  to  us  from  Runnymede, 
when  men  said,  "We  will  not  have 
masters;  we  will  be  a  people,  and  we 
will  seek  our  own  liberty." 

You  are  not  serving  a  government, 
gentlemen;  you  are  serving  a  people. 
For  we  who  for  the  time  being  consti- 
tute the  Government  are  merely  instru- 
ments for  a  little  while  in  the  hands  of 
a  great  Nation.  .  .  .  For  that  is  the 
only  distinction  that  America  has. 
Other  nations  have  been  strong,  other 
nations  have  piled  wrealth  as  high  as 


120  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

the  sky,  but  they  have  come  into  dis- 
grace because  they  used  their  force  and 
their  wealth  for  the  oppression  of  man- 
kind and  their  own  aggrandizement; 
and  America  will  not  bring  glory  to 
herself,  but  disgrace,  by  following  the 
beaten  paths  of  history.  We  must 
strike  out  upon  new  paths,  and  we  must 
count  upon  you  gentlemen  to  be  the 
explorers  who  will  carry  this  spirit 
and  spread  this  message  all  over  the 
seas  and  in  every  port  of  the  civilized 
world. 

Annapolis  Commencement  Address,  June  5,  1914. 

1HAVE  often  said  that  the  use  of 
a    university    is    to    make    young 
gentlemen    as    unlike    their    fathers    as 
possible. 

No  man  is  a  true  Christian  who  does 
not  think  constantly  of  how  he  can  lift 
his  brother,  how  he  can  assist  his  friend, 


FOR    HUMANITY 


how  he  can  enlighten  mankind,  how  he 
can  make  virtue  the  rule  of  conduct  in 
the  circle  in  which  he  lives. 

And,  then,  I  am  glad  that  it  is  an 
association.  Every  word  of  its  title 
means  an  element  of  strength.  Young 
men  are  strong.  Christian  young  men 
are  the  strongest  kind  of  young  men, 
and  when  they  associate  themselves  to- 
gether they  have  the  incomparable 
strength  of  organization. 

I  remember  hearing  a  very  wise  man 
say  once,  a  man  grown  old  in  the  ser- 
vice of  a  great  church,  that  he  had 
never  taught  his  son  religion  dogmatic- 
ally at  any  time;  that  he  and  the  boy's 
mother  had  agreed  that  if  the  at- 
mosphere of  that  home  did  not  make  a 
Christian  of  the  boy,  nothing  that  they 
could  say  would  make  a  Christian  of 
him.  They  knew  that  Christianity  was 
catching,  and  if  they  did  not  have  it,  it 


122 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Surging 
up  of  new 
strength 


would  not  be  communicated.  If  they 
did  have  it,  it  would  penetrate  while  the 
boy  slept,  almost. 

The  humblest  hovel,  therefore,  may 
produce  you  your  greatest  man.  A 
very  humble  hovel  did  produce  you  one 
of  your  greatest  men.  That  is  the  pro- 
cess of  life,  this  constant  surging  up  of 
the  new  strength  of  unnamed,  unrecog- 
nized, uncatalogued  men  who  are  just 
getting  into  the  running,  who  are  just 
coming  up  from  the  masses  of  the  un- 
recognized multitude.  You  do  not  know 
when  you  will  see  above  the  level 
masses  of  the  crowd  some  great  stature 
lifted  head  and  shoulders  above  the 
rest,  shouldering  its  way,  not  violently 
but  gently,  to  the  front  and  saying, 
"Here  am  I;  follow  me."  And  his 
voice  will  be  your  voice,  his  thought 
will  be  your  thought,  and  you  will 


FOR    HUMANITY  123 

follow   him   as   if   you   were    following 
the  best  things  in  yourselves. 

That  means  that  eternal  vigilance  is 
the  price,  not  only  of  liberty,  but  of 
a  great  many  other  things.  It  is  the 
price  of  everything  that  is  good.  It  is 
the  price  of  one's  own  soul. 

"The  Power  of  Christian  Young  Men"  being 
an  address  at  the  Anniversary  Celebration 
of  the  Y.M.C.A. 


ECONOMIC  PROBLEMS 


ECONOMIC    PROBLEMS 


IT  is  absolutely  imperative  that  we 
should  give  the  business  men  of 
this  country  a  banking  and  currency  sys- 
tem by  means  of  which  they  can  make 
use  of  the  freedom  of  enterprise  and  of 
individual  initiative  which  we  are  about 
to  bestow  upon  them. 

We  are  about  to  set  them  free;  we 
must  not  leave  them  without  the  tools 
of  action  when  they  are  free.  We  are 
about  to  set  them  free  by  removing  the 
trammels  of  the  protective  tariff.  Ever 
since  the  Civil  War  they  have  waited 
for  this  emancipation  and  for  the  free 
opportunities  it  will  bring  with  it.  ... 
Some  fell  in  love,  indeed,  with  the 
slothful  security  of  their  dependence 
upon  the  Government;  some  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  shelter  of  the  nursery  to 
set  up  a  mimic  mastery  of  their  own 
within  its  walls.  Now  both  the  tonic 


128 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


and  the  discipline  of  liberty  and  matur- 
ity are  to  ensue.    .    .    . 

It  is  not  enough  to  strike  the  shackles 
from  business.  The  duty  of  states- 
manship is  not  negative  merely.  It  is 
constructive  also.  We  must  show  that 
we  understand  what  business  needs  and 
that  we  know  how  to  supply  it. 


Must 

mobilize 

reserves 


Our  banking  laws  must  mobilize  re- 
serves; must  not  permit  the  concentra- 
tion anywhere  in  a  few  hands  of  the 
monetary  resources  of  the  country  or 
their  use  for  speculative  purposes  in 
such  volume  as  to  hinder  or  impede  or 
stand  in  the  way  of  other  more  legiti- 
mate, more  fruitful  uses.  And  the  con- 
trol of  the  system  of  banking  and  of 
issue  which  our  new  laws  are  to  set  up 
must  be  public,  not  private,  must  be 
vested  in  the  Government  itself,  so  that 
the  banks  may  be  the  instruments,  not 


ECONOMIC    PROBLEMS 


the   masters,    of   business    and    of   indi- 
vidual enterprise  and  initiative. 

Address  before  Congress  on  the  Banking  System, 
1913. 

WE  must  make  changes  in  our 
fiscal  laws  and  our  fiscal  sys- 
tem, whose  object  is  development,  a 
more  free  and  wholesome  development, 
not  revolution  or  upset  or  confusion.  We 
must  build  up  trade,  especially  foreign 
trade.  We  need  the  outlet  and  the  en- 
larged field  of  energy  more  than  we  ever 
did  before.  We  must  build  up  industry 
as  well,  and  must  adopt  freedom  in  the 
place  of  artificial  stimulation  only  so 
far  as  it  will  build,  not  pull  down. 

We  are  to  deal  with  the  facts  of  our 
own  day,  with  the  facts  of  no  other,  and 
to  make  laws  which  square  with  those 
facts. 

First  Address  to  Congress,  1913. 


13° 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Our 

merchant 
marine 
stunted 


Embodies 

comvncing 

experience 


TO  speak  plainly,  we  have  grossly 
erred  in  the  way  in  which  we 
have  stunted  and  hindered  the  develop- 
ment of  our  merchant  marine.  And  now, 
when  we  need  ships,  we  have  not  got 
them.  .  .  . 

Hence  the  pending  shipping  bill,  dis- 
cussed at  the  last  session  but  as  yet 
passed  by  neither  House.  In  my  judg- 
ment such  legislation  is  imperatively 
needed  and  cannot  wisely  be  postponed. 

Annual  Address  to  Congress,  December  8,  1914. 

CONSTRUCTIVE  legisla- 
tion, when  successful,  is  always 
the  embodiment  of  convincing  experi- 
ence, and  of  the  mature  public  opinion 
which  finally  springs  out  of  that  experi- 
ence. Legislation  is  a  business  of  inter- 
pretation, not  of  origination;  and  it  is 
now  plain  what  the  opinion  is  to  which 
we  must  give  effect  in  this  matter.  It 


ECONOMIC    PROBLEMS 


is  not  recent  or  hasty  opinion.  It 
springs  out  of  the  experience  of  a  whole 
generation.  It  has  clarified  itself  by 
long  contest,  and  those  who  for  a  long 
time  battled  with  it  and  sought  to 
change  it  are  now  frankly  and  honor- 
ably yielding  to  it  and  seeking  to  con- 
form their  actions  to  it. 

We  are  now  about  to  give  expres- 
sion to  the  best  business  judgment  of 
America,  to  what  we  know  to  be  the 
business  conscience  and  honor  of  the 
land.  The  Government  and  business 
men  are  ready  to  meet  each  other  half- 
way. .  .  . 

We  are  all  agreed  that  "private 
monopoly  is  indefensible  and  intoler- 
able," and  our  program  is  founded  upon 
that  conviction. 

Address  on  "Trusts  and  Monopolies  "  delivered 
at  a  joint  session  of  Congress,  January  20, 
1914. 


132 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


THE  advantage  about  a  Chamber 
of  Commerce  of  the  United 
States  is  that  there  is  only  one  way  to 
boost  the  United  States,  and  that  is  by 
seeing  to  it  that  the  conditions  under 
which  business  is  done  throughout  the 
whole  country  are  the  best  possible 
conditions.  There  cannot  be  any  dis- 
proportion about  that. 

.  .  .  The  minute  this  association 
falls  into  the  hands,  if  it  ever  should, 
of  men  from  a  single  section  or  men 
with  a  single  set  of  interests  most  at 
heart,  it  will  go  to  seed  and  die. 

.  .  .  We  are  just  beginning  to  do, 
systematically  and  scientifically,  what 
we  ought  long  ago  to  have  done,  to 
employ  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  to  survey  the  world  in  order 
that  American  commerce  might  be 
guided. 

Many   minds   are   necessary   to   com- 


The  world 

and 

American 


ECONOMIC    PROBLEMS 


pound  a  workable  method  of  life  in  a 
various  and  populous  country;  and  as  I 
think  about  the  whole  thing  and  pic- 
ture the  purposes,  the  infinitely  diffi- 
cult and  complex  purposes  which  we 
must  conceive  and  carry  out,  not  only 
does  it  minister  to  my  own  modesty, 
I  hope,  of  opinion,  but  it  also  fills  me 
with  a  very  great  enthusiasm.  It  is  a 
splendid  thing  to  be  part  of  a  great 
wide-awake  nation.  It  is  a  splendid 
thing  to  know  that  your  own  strength 
is  infinitely  multiplied  by  the  strength 
of  other  men  who  love  the  country  as 
you  do. 

Address   before   the    United   States   Chamber   of 
Commerce,    February    3,    1915. 


INTERNATIONAL   POLITICS 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


THE  future  has  much  in  store  for 
Mexico,  as  for  all  the  States  of 
Central  America;  but  the  best  gifts 
can  come  to  her  only  if  she  be  ready 
and  free  to  receive  them  and  to  enjoy 
them  honorably.  America  in  particular 
— America  north  and  south  and  upon 
both  continents — waits  upon  the  devel- 
opment of  Mexico;  and  that  develop- 
ment can  be  sound  and  lasting  only  if 
it  be  the  product  of  a  genuine  freedom, 
a  just  and  ordered  government  founded 
upon  law.  Only  so  can  it  be  peaceful 
or  fruitful  of  the  benefits  of  peace. 
Mexico  has  a  great  and  enviable  future 
before  her,  if  only  she  choose  and  at- 
tain the  paths  of  honest  constitutional 
government. 


For  the  rest,  I  deem  it  my  duty  to 
exercise    the    authority    conferred   upon 


138  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

me  by  the  law  of  March  14,  1912,  to 
see  to  it  that  neither  side  to  the  strug- 
gle now  going  on  in  Mexico  receive  any 
assistance  from  this  side  the  border.  I 
shall  follow  the  best  practice  of  nations 
in  the  matter  of  neutrality  by  forbid- 
ding the  exportation  of  arms  or  muni- 
tions of  war  of  any  kind  from  the 
United  States  to  any  part  of  the  Repub- 
lic of  Mexico — a  policy  suggested  by 
several  interesting  precedents  and  cer- 
tainly dictated  by  many  manifest  con- 
siderations of  practical  expediency.  We 
cannot  in  the  circumstances  be  the  par- 
tisans of  either  party  to  the  contest 
that  now  distracts  Mexico,  or  consti- 
tute ourselves  the  virtual  umpire  be- 
tween them. 

.  .  .  All  the  world  expects  us  in 
such  circumstances  to  act  as  Mexico's 
nearest  friend  and  intimate  adviser. 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


This      is      our      immemorial      relation 
towards    her. 

Address  on  Mexican  Affairs,  delivered  at  a  joint 
session  of  the  two  Houses  of  Congress,  Au- 
gust 27,  1913. 

DO  you  not  see  now  what  is  about 
to  happen?  These  great  tides 
which  have  been  running  along  paral- 
lels of  latitude  will  now  swing  south- 
ward athwart  parallels  of  latitude,  and 
that  opening  gate  at  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama  will  open  the  world  to  a  com- 
merce that  she  has  not  known  before, 
a  commerce  of  intelligence,  of  thought, 
and  sympathy  between  North  and 
South.  The  Latin-American  States 
which,  to  their  disadvantage,  have  been 
off  the  main  lines  will  now  be  on  the 
main  lines.  .  .  . 

I  want  to  take  this  occasion  to  say 
that  the  United  States  will  never  again 
seek  one  additional  foot  of  territory  by 


140  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

conquest.  She  will  devote  herself  to 
showing  that  she  knows  how  to  make 
honorable  and  fruitful  use  of  the  terri- 
tory she  has,  and  she  must  regard  it  as 
one  of  the  duties  of  friendship  £o  see 
that  from  no  quarter  are  material  inter- 
ests made  superior  to  human  liberty  and 
national  opportunity.  I  say  this,  not 
with  a  single  thought  that  anyone  will 
gainsay  it,  but  merely  to  fix  in  our  con- 
sciousness what  our  real  relationship 
with  the  rest  of  America  is.  It  is  the 
relationship  of  a  family  of  mankind 
devoted  to  the  development  of  true 
constitutional  liberty.  We  know  that 
that  is  the  soil  out  of  which  the  best 
enterprise  springs.  We  know  that  this 
is  a  cause  which  we  are  making  in  com- 
mon with  our  neighbors,  because  we 
have  had  to  make  it  for  ourselves.  .  .  . 

Address  delivered  at  Mobile,  Alabama,  before 
the  Southern  Commercial  Congress,  on  Octo- 
ber 27,  1913. 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


THE  country,  I  am  thankful  to  say, 
is  at' peace  with  all  the  world,  and 
many  happy  manifestations  multiply 
about  us  of  a  growing  cordiality  and 
sense  of  community  of  interest  among 
the  nations,  foreshadowing  an  age  of 
settled  peace  and  good  will.  More  and 
more  readily  each  decade  do  the 
nations  manifest  their  willingness  to 
bind  themselves  by  solemn  treaty  to  the 
processes  of  peace,  the  processes  of 
frankness  and  fair  concession.  So  far 
the  United  States  has  stood  at  the 
front  of  such  negotiations.  She  will,  I 
earnestly  hope  and  confidently  believe, 
give  fresh  proof  of  her  sincere  adher- 
ence to  the  cause  of  international  friend- 
ship by  ratifying  the  several  treaties  qf 
arbitration  awaiting  renewal  by  the 
Senate.  In  addition  to  these,  it  has 
been  the  privilege  of  the  Department 
of  State  to  gain  the  assent,  in  principle, 


142 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


of  no  less  than  thirty-one  nations,  rep- 
resenting four-fifths  of  the  population 
of  the  world,  to  the  negotiation  of 
treaties  by  which  it  shall  be  agreed 
that  whenever  differences  of  interest  or 
of  policy  arise  which  cannot  be  resolved 
by  the  ordinary  processes  of  di- 
plomacy they  shall  be  publicly  analyzed, 
discussed,  and  reported  upon  by  a 
tribunal  chosen  by  the  parties  before 
either  nation  determines  its  course  of 
action. 

There  is  only  one  possible  standard 
by  which  to  determine  controversies  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  other  na- 
tions, and  that  is  compounded  of  these 
two  elements:  Our  own  honor  and  our 
obligations  to  the  peace  of  the  world. 
A  test  so  compounded  ought  easily  to 
be  made  to  govern  both  the  establish- 
ment of  new  treaty  obligations  and 


The  on 
standa 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


the     interpretation     of     those     already 
assumed. 

Address  on  the  State  of  the  Union,  delivered 
before  the  two  Houses  of  Congress,  Decem- 
ber 2,  1913. 

THIS  Government  can,  I  earnestly 
hope,  in  no  circumstances  be 
forced  into  war  with  the  people  of 
Mexico.  Mexico  is  torn  by  civil  strife. 
If  we  are  to  accept  the  tests  of  its  own 
constitution,  it  has  no  government.  .  .  . 
I  believe  that  I  speak  for  the  American 
people  when  I  say  that  we  do  not  desire 
to  control  in  any  degree  the  affairs  of 
our  sister  Republic.  Our  feeling  for 
the  people  of  Mexico  is  one  of  deep  and 
genuine  friendship,  and  everything  that 
we  have  so  far  done  or  refrained  from 
doing  has  proceeded  from  our  desire  to 
help  them,  not  to  hinder  or  embarrass 
them.  We  would  not  wish  even  to 


144 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


exercise  the   good   offices   of   friendship 
without  their  welcome  and  consent. 

Address  on  the  Tampico  Incident,  made  before 
the  two  Houses  of  Congress,  April  20,  1914. 


Must  be 
neutral  in 
fact 


THE  United  States  must  be  neu- 
tral in  fact  as  well  as  in  name 
during  these  days  that  are  to  try  men's 
souls.  We  must  be  impartial  in  thought 
as  well  as  in  action,  must  put  a  curb 
upon  our  sentiments  as  well  as  upon 
every  transaction  that  might  be  con- 
strued as  a  preference  of  one  party  to 
the  struggle  before  another. 

My  thought  is  of  America.  I  am 
speaking,  I  feel  sure,  the  earnest  wish 
and  purpose  of  every  thoughtful 
American  that  this  great  country  of 
ours,  which  is.  of  course,  the  first  in  our 
thoughts  and  in  our  hearts,  should 
show  herself  in  this  time  of  peculiar 
trial  a  nation  fit  beyond  others  to 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


exhibit  the  fine  poise  of  undisturbed 
judgment,  the  dignity  of  self-control, 
the  efficiency  of  dispassionate  action;  a 
nation  that  neither  sits  in  judgment 
upon  others  nor  is  disturbed  in  her  own 
counsels  and  which  keeps  herself  fit 
and  free  to  do  what  is  honest  and  dis- 
interested and  truly  serviceable  for  the 
peace  of  the  world. 

It  will  be  easy  to  excite  passion  and 
difficult  to  allay  it.  Those  responsible 
for  exciting  it  will  assume  a  heavy  re- 
sponsibility, responsibility  for  no  less  a 
thing  than  that  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  whose  love  of  their 
country  and  whose  loyalty  to  its  Gov- 
ernment should  unite  them  as  Ameri- 
cans all,  bound  in  honor  and  affection 
to  think  first  of  her  and  her  interests, 
may  be  divided  in  camps  of  hostile 
opinion,  hot  against  each  other,  in- 


146 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


volved  in  the  war  itself  in  impulse  and 
opinion  if  not  in  action. 

Such  divisions  among  us  would  be 
fatal  to  our  peace  of  mind  and  might 
seriously  stand  in  the  way  of  the 
proper  performance  of  our  duty  as  the 
one  great  nation  at  peace,  the  one  peo- 
ple holding  itself  ready  to  play  a  part 
of  impartial  mediation  and  speak  the 
counsels  of  peace  and  accommodation, 
not  as  a  partisan,  but  as  a  friend. 

"American  Neutrality,"  an  appeal  to  the  citizens 
of  the  Republic,  August  20,    1914. 


Opinion 
of  the 
world 


THE   opinion   of   the   world   is   the 
mistress  of  the  world;   and  the 
processes   of   international   law    are   the 
slow  processes  by  which  opinion  works 
its    will.      What    impresses    me    is    the 
constant  thought  that  that  is  the  tribu- 
nal at  the  bar  of  which  we  all  sit.  .    .    . 
The  disinterested  course  is  always  the 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


biggest  course  to  pursue  not  only,  but 
it  is  in  the  long  run  the  most  profitable 
course  to  pursue.  .  .  . 

I  once  said  to  a  lawyer  with  whom 
I  was  discussing  some  question  of  prece- 
dent, and  in  whose  presence  I  was  ven- 
turing to  doubt  the  rational  validity, 
at  any  rate,  of  the  particular  prece- 
dents he  cited,  "After  all,  isn't  our 
object  justice?"  And  he  said,  "God 
forbid!  We  should  be  very  much 
confused  if  we  made  that  our  stan- 
dard. Our  standard  is  to  find  out  what 
the  rule  has  been  and  how  the  rule 
that  has  been  applies  to  the  case  that 
is." 

.  .  .  My  hope  is  that,  being  stirred 
to  the  depths  by  the  extraordinary  cir- 
cumstances of  the  time  in  which  we 
live,  we  may  recover  from  those  depths 
something  of  a  renewal  of  that  vision 
of  the  law  with  which  men  may  be 


148 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


supposed  to  have  started  out  in  the 
old  days  of  the  oracles,  who  com- 
muned with  the  intimations  of  divinity. 
.  .  .  .We  are  custodians  of  the 
spirit  of  righteousness,  of  the  spirit  of 
equal-handed  justice,  of  the  spirit  of 
hope  which  believes  in  the  perfectibility 
of  the  law  with  the  perfectibility  of  hu- 
man life  itself. 

"The  Opinion  of  the  World,"  an  address  before 
the  American  Bar  Association,  October  20, 
1914. 


The 

fourteen 

points 


IT  will  be  our  wish  and  purpose  that 
the  processes  of  peace,  when  they 
are  begun,  shall  be  absolutely  open 
and  that  they  shall  involve  and  permit 
henceforth  no  secret  understandings  of 
any  kind.  The  day  of  conquest  and 
aggrandizement  is  gone  by;  so  is  also 
the  day  of  secret  covenants  entered 
into  in  the  interest  of  particular  gov- 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


ernments  and  likely  at  some  unlooked- 
for  moment  to  upset  the  peace  of  the 
world. 

All  the  peoples  of  the  world  are  in 
effect  partners  in  this  interest,  and  for 
our  own  part  we  see  very  clearly  that 
unless  justice  be  done  to  others  it  will 
not  be  done  to  us.  The  program  of  the 
world's  peace,  therefore,  is  our  pro- 
gram; and  that  program,  the  only  pos- 
sible program,  as  we  see  it,  is  this : 

I.  Open  covenants  of  peace,   openly 
arrived  at,   after  which  there  shall  be 
no  private  international  understandings 
of  any  kind,  but  diplomacy  shall  pro- 
ceed  always    frankly   and   in   the   pub- 
lic view. 

II.  Absolute     freedom     of     naviga- 
tion upon  the  seas,   outside  territorial 
waters,  alike  in  peace  and  in  war,  except 


I5O  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

as  the  seas  may  be  closed  in  whole  or 
in  part  by  international  action  for  the 
enforcement  of  international  covenants. 

III.  The  removal,  so  far  as  possible, 
of  all  economic  barriers  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  an  equality  of  trade  condi- 
tions among  all  the  nations  consenting 
to  the  peace  and  associating  themselves 
for  its  maintenance. 

IV.  Adequate   guarantees   given    and 
taken  that  national  armaments  will  be 
reduced  to  the   lowest  point  consistent 
with  domestic  safety. 

V.  A   free,   open-minded,   and   abso- 
lutely impartial  adjustment  of  all  colo- 
nial claims,  based  upon  a  strict  observ- 
ance of  the  principle  that  in  determin- 
ing all  such  questions  of  sovereignty  the 
interests   of   the   populations    concerned 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


must  have  equal  weight  with  the  equita- 
ble claims  of  the  Government  whose 
title  is  to  be  determined. 

VI.  The  evacuation  of  all  Russian 
territory,  and  such  a  settlement  of  all 
questions  affecting  Russia  as  will  secure 
the  best  and  freest  cooperation  of  the 
other  nations  of  the  world  in  obtaining 
for  her  an  unhampered  and  unembar- 
rassed opportunity  for  the  independent 
determination  of  her  own  political  de- 
velopment and  national  policy,  and  as- 
sure her  of  a  sincere  welcome  into  the 
society  of  free  nations  under  institu- 
tions of  her  own  choosing;  and,  more 
than  a  welcome,  assistance  also  of  every 
kind  that  she  may  need  and  may  her- 
self desire.  The  treatment  accorded  Rus- 
sia by  her  sister  nations  in  the  months 
to  come  will  be  the  acid  test  of  their 
good  will,  of  their  comprehension  of 


152  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

her  needs  as  distinguished  from  their 
own  interests,  and  of  their  intelligent 
and  unselfish  sympathy. 

VII.  Belgium,  the  whole  world  will 
agree,  must  be  evacuated  and  restored 
without  any  attempt  to  limit  the  sover- 
eignty which  she  enjoys  in  common  with 
all  other  free  nations.     No  other  single 
act  will  serve  as  this  will  serve  to  re- 
store  confidence   among  the  nations   in 
the    laws   which   they   have   themselves 
set  and  determined  for  the  government 
of    their    relations    with    one    another. 
Without    this    healing    act    the    whole 
structure   and   validity   of   international 
law  is  forever  impaired. 

VIII.  All  French  territory  should  be 
freed    and    the    invaded    portions    re- 
stored; and  the  wrong  done  to  France 
by   Prussia    in    1871    in   the   matter   of 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


Alsace-Lorraine,  which  has  unsettled 
the  peace  of  the  world  for  nearly  fifty 
years,  should  be  righted,  in  order  that 
peace  may  once  more  be  made  secure 
in  the  interest  of  all. 

IX.  A  readjustment  of  the  frontiers 
of  Italy  should  be  effected  along  clearly 
recognizable  lines  of  nationality. 

X.  The  peoples  of  Austria-Hungary, 
whose  place  among  the  nations  we  wish 
to  see  safeguarded  and  assured,  should 
be   accorded  the   freest   opportunity  of 
autonomous  development. 

XL  Roumania,  Serbia,  and  Monte- 
negro should  be  evacuated;  occupied 
territories  restored;  Serbia  accorded  free 
and  secure  access  to  the  sea;  and  the 
relations  of  the  several  Balkan  states 
to  one  another  determined  by  friendly 


154 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


counsel  along  historically  established 
lines  of  allegiance  and  nationality;  and 
international  guarantees  of  the  political 
and  economic  independence  and  terri- 
torial integrity  of  the  several  Balkan 
states  should  be  entered  into. 

XII.  The  Turkish  portions  of  the 
present  Ottoman  Empire  should  be 
assured  a  secure  sovereignty,  but  the 
other  nationalities  which  are  now  under 
Turkish  rule  should  be  assured  an  un- 
doubted security  of  life  and  an  abso- 
lutely unmolested  opportunity  of  au- 
tonomous development,  and  the  Dar- 
danelles should  be  permanently  opened 
as  a  free  passage  to  the  ships  and  com- 
merce of  all  nations  under  international 
guaranties. 


Poland  to 
be  free 


XIII.  An    independent    Polish    state 
should  be  erected  which  should  include 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


the  territories  inhabited  by  indisputably 
Polish  populations,  which  should  be  as- 
sured a  free  and  secure  access  to  the 
sea,  and  whose  political  and  economic 
independence  and  territorial  integrity 
should  be  guaranteed  by  international 
covenant. 

XIV.  A  general  association  of  na- 
tions must  be  formed,  under  specific 
covenants,  for  the  purpose  of  afford- 
ing mutual  guarantees  of  political  in- 
dependence and  territorial  integrity  to 
great  and  small  states  alike 

In  regard  to  these  essential  rectifica- 
tions of  wrong  and  assertions  of  right 
we  feel  ourselves  to  be  intimate  part- 
ners of  all  the  Governments  and  peo- 
ples associated  together  against  the 
imperialists.  We  cannot  be  separated 
in  interest  or  divided  in  purpose.  We 
stand  together  until  the  end. 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Fight 
until 
achieved 


For  such  arrangements  and  covenants 
we  are  willing  to  fight  and  to  continue 
to  fight  until  they  are  achieved;  but 
only  because  we  wish  the  right  to  pre- 
vail and  desire  a  just  and  stable  peace 
such  as  can  be  secured  only  by  removing 
the  chief  provocations  to  war,  which 
this  program  does  remove.  We  have  no 
jealousy  of  German  greatness,  and 
there  is  nothing  in  this  program  that 
impairs  it.  We  grudge  her  no  achieve- 
ment or  distinction  of  learning  or  of 
pacific  enterprise  such  as  have  made 
her  record  very  bright  and  very  envia- 
ble. We  do  not  wish  to  injure  her 
or  to  block  in  any  way  her  legitimate 
influence  or  power.  We  do  not  wish 
to  fight  her  either  with  arms  or  with 
hostile  arrangements  of  trade  if  she  is 
willing  to  associate  herself  with  us  and 
the  other  peace-loving  nations  of  the 
world  in  covenants  of  justice  and  law 


INTERNATIONAL    POLITICS 


and  fair  dealing.  We  wish  her  only 
to  accept  a  place  of  equality  among 
the  peoples  of  the  world, — the  new- 
world  in  which  we  now  live,— instead 
of  a  place  of  mastery. 

Neither  do  we  presume  to  suggest  to 
her  any  alteration  or  modification  of 
her  institutions.  But  it  is  necessary,  we 
must  frankly  say,  and  necessary  as  a 
preliminary  to  any  intelligent  dealings 
with  her  on  our  part,  that  we  should 
know  whom  her  spokesmen  speak  for 
when  they  speak  to  us,  whether  for  the 
Reichstag  majority  or  for  the  mili- 
tary party  and  the  men  whose  creed  is 
imperial  domination. 

We  have  spoken  now,  surely,  i^-toOTHS 
too  concrete  to  admit  afaisttf*  farther 
doubt  or  question.  An  evident  principle 
runs  through  the  whole  program  I  have 
outlined.  It  is  the  principle  of  justice 
to  all  peoples  and  nationalities,  and 


158  THE    WISDOM   OF   WOODROVV    WILSON 

their  right  to  live  on  equal  terms  of 
liberty  and  safety  with  one  another, 
whether  they  be  strong  or  weak.  Un- 
less this  principle  be  made  its  founda- 
tion no  part  of  the  structure  of  inter- 
national justice  can  stand.  The  people 
of  the  United  States  could  act  upon  no 
other  principle;  and  to  the  vindication 
of  this  principle  they  are  ready  to  de- 
vote their  lives,  their  honor,  and  every- 
thing that  they  possess.  The  moral 
climax  of  this  the  culminating  and  final 
war  for  human  liberty  has  come,  and 
they  are  ready  to  put  their  own  strength? 
their  own  highest  purpose,  their  own 
integrity  and  devotion  to  the  test. 

Address  at  a  joint  session  of  the  two  Houses 
of  Congress,  January  8,   1918. 


TOUCHING  THE  WAR 


TOUCHING   THE    WAR 


THE  people  of  this  country  are  both 
intelligent  and  profoundly  pa- 
triotic. They  are  ready  to  meet  the 
present  conditions  in  the  right  way  and 
to  support  the  Government  with  gen- 
erous self-denial.  They  know  and  un- 
derstand, and  will  be  intolerant  only  of 
those  who  dodge  responsibility  or  are 
not  frank  with  them. 

Address  before  Congress,  September  4,  1914. 

1KNOW  that  whenever  the  test 
comes  every  man's  heart  will  be  first 
for  America.  It  was. principle  and  affec- 
tion and  ambition  and  hope  that  drew 
men  to  these  shores,  and  they  are  not 
going  to  forget  the  errand  upon  which 
they  came  and  allow  America,  the  home 
of  their  refuge  and  hope,  to  suffer  by 
any  forgetfulness  on  their  part. 

.    .    .    There     is     no     precedent     in 
American  history  for  any  action  of  ag- 


162 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


gression  on  the  part  of  the  United 
States  or  for  any  action  which  might 
mean  that  America  is  seeking  to  con- 
nect herself  with  the  controversies  on 
the  other  side  of  the  water.  Men  who 
seek  to  provoke  us  to  such  action  have 
forgotten  the  traditions  of  the  United 
States,  but  it  behooves  those  with  whom 
you  have  entrusted  office  to  remember 
the  traditions  of  the  United  States  and 
to  see  to  it  that  the  actions  of  the  Gov- 
ernment are  made  to  square  with  those 
traditions. 

...  In  the  first  place,  I  know 
that  you  are  depending  upon  me  to 
keep  this  Nation  out  of  the  war.  So 
far  I  have  done  so,  and  I  pledge  you 
my  word  that,  God  helping  me,  I  will 
if  it  is  possible. 
The  colon  Do  not  deceive  yourselves,  ladies  and 

of  the  J  ' 

gentlemen,  as  to  where  the  colors  of 
that  flag  came  from.  Those  lines  of 


TOUCHING   THE    WAR 


red  are  lines  of  blood,  nobly  and  un- 
selfishly shed  by  men  who  loved  the 
liberty  of  their  fellow  men  more  than 
they  loved  their  own  lives  and  fortunes. 
God  forbid  that  we  should  have  to  use 
the  blood  of  America  to  freshen  the 
color  of  that  flag;  but  if  it  should  ever 
be  necessary  again  to  assert  the  majesty 
and  integrity  of  those  ancient  and  hon- 
orable principles,  that  flag  will  be  colored 
once  more,  and  in  being  colored  will  be 
glorified  and  purified. 

Address  made  in  Milwaukee,  February  1,  1916. 

ri~!HE  Government  of  the  United 
A  States  has  been  very  patient.  At 
every  stage  of  this  distressing  ex- 
perience of  tragedy  after  tragedy  in 
which  its  own  citizens  were  involved  it 
has  sought  to  be  restrained  from  any 
extreme  course  of  action  or  of  protest 
by  a  thoughtful  consideration  of  the  ex- 


164 


THE    WISDOM   OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


traordinary  circumstances  of  this  unpre- 
cedented war,  and  actuated  in  all  that 
it  said  or  did  by  the  sentiments  of 
genuine  friendship  which  the  people  of 
the  United  States  have  always  enter- 
tained and  continue  to  entertain  towards 
the  German  nation. 

The  Government  of  the  United 
States  is  at  last  forced  to  the  conclusion 
that  there  is  but  one  course  it  can  pur- 
sue; and  that  unless  the  Imperial  Ger- 
man Government  should  now  imme- 
diately declare  and  effect  an  abandon- 
ment of  its  present  methods  of  warfare 
against  passenger-  and  freight-carrying 
vessels  this  Government  can  have  no 
choice  but  to  sever  diplomatic  relations 
with  the  Government  of  the  German 
Empire  altogether. 

This  decjsjon  j  have  arrived  at  with 
regret  fae  keenest  regret ;  the  possibility  of  the 

action  contemplated  I  am  sure  all 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


thoughtful  Americans  will  look  forward 
to  with  unaffected  reluctance.  But  we 
cannot  forget  that  we  are  in  some  sort 
and  by  the  force  of  circumstances  the 
responsible  spokesmen  of  the  rights  of 
humanity,  and  that  we  cannot  remain 
silent  while  those  rights  seem  in  process 
of  being  swept  utterly  away  in  the 
maelstrom  of  this  terrible  war.  We 
owe  it  to  a  due  regard  for  our  own 
rights  as  a  nation,  to  our  sense  of  duty 
as  a  representative  of  the  rights  of 
neutrals  the  world  over,  and  to  a  just 
conception  of  the  rights  of  mankind  to 
take  this  stand  now  with  the  utmost 
solemnity  and  firmness. 

Address  delivered  before  Congress  on  the  Sub- 
marine Question,  April  19,   1916. 

SINCE  it  has  unhappily  proved  im- 
possible  to   safeguard  our  neutral 
rights  by  diplomatic  means  against  the 


i66 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


unwarranted  infringements  they  are  suf- 
fering at  the  hands  of  Germany,  there 
may  be  no  recourse  but  to  armed  neutral- 
ity, which  we  shall  know  how  to  main- 
tain and  for  which  there  is  abundant 
American  precedent. 

Address  delivered  at  a  joint  session  of  Congress, 
February  26,   1917. 


Definite 
concert  of 
power 


IN  every  discussion  of-  the  peace  that 
must  end  this  war  it  is  taken  for 
granted  that  that  peace  must  be  fol- 
lowed by  some  definite  concert  of  power 
which  will  make  it  virtually  impossible 
that  any  such  catastrophe  should  ever 
overwhelm  us  again.  Every  lover  of 
mankind,  every  sane  and  thoughtful 
man  must  take  that  for  granted. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  any  Ameri- 
can government  would  throw  any 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  any  terms  of 
peace  the  governments  now  at  war 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


might  agree  upon,  or  seek  to  upset  them 
when  made,  whatever  they  might  be. 
I  only  take  it  for  granted  that  mere 
terms  of  peace  between  the  belligerents 
will  not  satisfy  even  the  belligerents 
themselves.  Mere  agreements  may  not 
make  peace  secure.  It  will  be  abso- 
lutely necessary  that  a  force  be  created 
as  a  guarantor  of  the  permanency  of 
the  settlement  so  much  greater  than  the 
force  of  any  nation  now  engaged  or  any 
alliance  hitherto  formed  or  projected 
that  no  nation,  no  probable  combina- 
tion of  nations,  could  face  or  withstand 
it.  If  the  peace  presently  to  be  made  is 
to  endure,  it  must  be  a  peace  made 
secure  by  the  organized  major  force 
of  mankind. 

There  must  be,  not  a  balance  of 
power,  but  a  community  of  power;  not 
organized  rivalries,  but  an  organized 
common  peace. 


i68 


THE    WISDOM   OF    WOODROW   WILSON 


The  right  state  of  mind,  the  right 
feeling  between  nations,  is  as  necessary 
for  a  lasting  peace  as  is  the  just  settle- 
ment of  vexed  questions  of  territory  or 
of  racial  and  national  allegiance. 

And  the  paths  of  the  sea  must  alike 
in  law  and  in  fact  be  free.  The  free- 
dom of  the  seas  is  the  sine  qua  non  of 
peace,  equality,  and  cooperation.  The 
free,  constant,  unthreatened  intercourse 
of  nations  is  an  essential  part  of  the 
process  of  peace  and  of  development. 
It  need  not  be  difficult  either  to  define 
or  to  secure  the  freedom  of  the  seas  if 
the  governments  of  the  world  sincerely 
desire  to  come  to  an  agreement  con- 
cerning it. 
NO  peace  Peace  cannot  be  had  without  conces- 

without  .  ,  .  r 

sacrifice         sion  and  sacrifice. 

I  am  proposing,  as  it  were,  that  the 
nations  should  with  one  accord  adopt 
the  doctrine  of  President  Monroe  as 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


the  doctrine  of  the  world:  that  no 
nation  should  seek  to  extend  its  polity 
over  any  other  nation  or  people,  but 
that  every  people  should  be  left  free  to 
determine  its  own  polity,  its  own  way  of 
development,  unhindered,  unthreatened, 
unafraid,  the  little  along  with  the  great 
and  powerful. 

I  am  proposing  government  by  the 
consent  of  the  governed;  that  freedom 
of  the  seas  which  in  international  con- 
ference after  conference  representatives 
of  the  United  States  have  urged  with 
the  eloquence  of  those  who  are  the  con- 
vinced disciples  of  liberty;  and  that 
moderation  of  armaments  which  makes 
of  armies  and  navies  a  power  for  order 
merely,  not  an  instrument  of  aggression 
or  of  selfish  violence. 

These  are  American  principles,  Amer- 
ican policies.  We  could  stand  for  no 
others.  And  they  are  also  the  principles 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

and  policies  of  forward-looking  men 
and  women  everywhere,  of  every  mod- 
ern nation,  of  every  enlightened  com- 
munity. They  are  the  principles  of 
mankind  and  must  prevail. 

Address   to   the   United  States   Senate,  January 
22,  1917. 


Overt 
acts 


1  REFUSE  to  believe  that  it  is  the 
intention  of  the  German  authorities 
to  do  in  fact  what  they  have  warned  us 
they  will  feel  at  liberty  to  do.  I  can- 
not bring  myself  to  believe  that  they 
will  indeed  pay  no  regard  to  the  ancient 
friendship  between  their  people  and  our 
own  or  to  the  solemn  obligations  which 
have  been  exchanged  between  them,  and 
destroy  American  ships  and  take  the  lives 
of  American  citizens  in  the  willful 
prosecution  of  the  ruthless  naval  pro- 
gram they  have  announced  their  inten- 
tion to  adopt.  Only  actual  overt  acts 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


on   their   part  can  make  me  believe  it 
even  now.    .    .    . 

We  do  not  desire  any  hostile  conflict 
with  the  Imperial  German  Government. 
We  are  the  sincere  friends  of  the  Ger- 
man people  and  earnestly  desire  to  re- 
main at  peace  with  the  Government 
which  speaks  for  them.  We  shall  not 
believe  that  they  are  hostile  to  us  un- 
less and  until  we  are  obliged  to  believe 
it;  and  we  purpose  nothing  more  than 
the  reasonable  defense  of  the  undoubted 
rights  of  our  people. 

Address  to  the  joint  Houses  of  Congress,  Febru- 
ary  3,    1917. 

THE  supreme  test  of  the  nation  has 
come.  We  must  all  speak,  act,  and 
serve  together ! 

Conclusion  in  an  "Appeal  to  the  Country"  April 
16,    1917. 


172 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


AS  some  of  the  injuries  done  us 
have  become  intolerable  we  have 
still  been  clear  that  we  wished  nothing 
for  ourselves  that  we  were  not  ready  to 
demand  for  all  mankind, — fair  dealing, 
justice,  the  freedom  to  live  and  be  at 
ease  against  organized  wrong. 

We  desire  neither  conquest  nor  ad- 
vantage. We  wish  nothing  that  can  be 
had  only  at  the  cost  of  another  people. 
We  have  always  professed  unselfish  pur- 
pose and  we  covet  the  opportunity  to 
prove  that  our  professions  are  sincere. 

These,  therefore,  are  the  things  we 
shall  stand  for,  whether  in  war  or  in 
peace : 

That  all  nations  are  equally  interested 
in  the  peace  of  the  world  and  in  the 
political  stability  of  free  peoples,  and 
equally  responsible  for  their  main- 
tenance; 

That  the  essential  principle  of  peace 


Principles 
u-e  stand 
for 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


is  the  actual  equality  of  nations  in  all 
matters  of  right  or  privilege; 

That  peace  cannot  securely  or  justly 
rest  upon  an  armed  balance  of  power; 

That  governments  derive  all  their 
just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed  and  that  no  other  powers 
should  be  supported  by  the  common 
thought,  purpose,  or  power  of  the 
family  of  nations. 

That  the  seas  should  be  equally  free 
and  safe  for  the  use  of  all  peoples,  un- 
der rules  set  up  by  common  agreement 
and  consent,  and  that,  so  far  as  prac- 
ticable, they  should  be  accessible  to  all 
upon  equal  terms; 

That  national  armaments  should  be 
limited  to  the  necessities  of  national 
order  and  domestic  safety; 

That  the  community  of  interest  and 


174 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


of  power  upon  which  peace  must  hence- 
forth depend  imposes  upon  each  nation 
the  duty  of  seeing  to  it  that  all  in- 
fluences proceeding  from  its  own  citizens 
meant  to  encourage  or  assist  revolution 
in  other  states  should  be  sternly  and 
effectually  suppressed  and  prevented. 

Second  Inaugural  Address,  March  4,  1917. 


Warfare 

against 

mankind 


PROPERTY  can  be  paid   for;  the 
lives    of    peaceful    and    innocent 
people  cannot  be.    The  present  German 
submarine  warfare  against  commerce  is 
a  warfare  against  mankind. 

With  a  profound  sense  of  the  solemn 
and  even  tragical  character  of  the  step  I 
am  taking  and  of  the  grave  responsibili- 
ties which  it  involves,  but  in  unhesitat- 
ing obedience  to  what  I  deem  my  con- 
stitutional duty,  I  advise  that  the 
Congress  declare  the  recent  course  of 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR  175 

the  Imperial  German  Government  to  be 
in  fact  nothing  less  than  war  against 
the  Government  and  people  of  the 
United  States;  that  it  formally  accept 
the  status  of  belligerent  which  has  thus 
been  thrust  upon  it;  and  that  it  take 
immediate  steps  not  only  to  put  the 
country  in  a  more  thorough  state  of  de- 
fense but  also  to  exert  all  its  power  and 
employ  all  its  resources  to  bring  the 
Government  of  the  German  Empire  to 
terms  and  end  the  war. 

We  have  no  quarrel  with  the  German 
people.  We  have  no  feeling  towards 
them  but  one  of  sympathy  and  friend- 
ship. It  was  not  upon  their  impulse 
that  their  government  acted  in  entering 
this  war.  It  was  not  with  their  previous 
knowledge  or  approval. 

A  steadfast  concert  for  peace  can 
never  be  maintained  except  by  a  part- 
nership of  democratic  nations. 


:76 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


For  the 
rights  of 
nations 


.  .  .  We  are  glad,  now  that  we 
see  the  facts  with  no  veil  of  false  pre- 
tense about  them,  to  fight  thus  for  the 
ultimate  peace  of  the  world  and  for  the 
liberation  of  its  peoples,  the  German 
peoples  included;  for  the  rights  of 
nations  great  and  small  and  the  privilege 
of  men  everywhere  to  choose  their  way 
of  life  and  of  obedience.  The  world 
must  be  made  safe  for  democracy.  Its 
peace  must  be  planted  upon  the  tested 
foundations  of  political  liberty.  We 
have  no  selfish  ends  to  serve.  We  de- 
sire no  conquest,  no  dominion.  We  seek 
no  indemnities  for  ourselves,  no  ma- 
terial compensation  for  the  sacrifices  wre 
shall  freely  make.  We  are  but  one  of 
the  champions  of  the  rights  of  man- 
kind. We  shall  be  satisfied  when  those 
rights  have  been  made  as  secure  as  the 
faith  and  the  freedom  of  nations  can 
make  them. 


TOUCHING   THE    WAR 


We  are,  let  me  say  again,  the  sincere 
friends  of  the  German  people,  and  shall 
desire  nothing  so  much  as  the  early 
reestablishment  of  intimate  relations  of 
mutual  advantage  between  us, — how- 
ever hard  it  may  be  for  them,  for  the 
time  being,  to  believe  that  this  is  spoken 
from  our  hearts.  We  have  borne  with 
their  present  government  through  all 
these  bitter  months  because  of  that 
friendship, — exercising  a  patience  and 
forbearance  which  would  otherwise 
have  been  impossible.  We  shall,  happily, 
still  have  an  opportunity  to  prove  that 
friendship  in  our  daily  attitude  and 
actions  towards^  the  millions  of  men  and 
women  of  German  birth  and  native 
sympathy  who  live  amongst  us  and 
share  our  life,  and  we  shall  be  proud  to 
prove  it  towards  all  who  are  in  fact 
loyal  to  their  neighbors  and  to  the  Gov- 
ernment in  the  hour  of  test.  They  are, 


i78 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


most  of  them,  as  true  and  loyal  Ameri- 
cans as  if  they  had  never  known  any 
other  fealty  or  allegiance. 

The    Call    to    War — from    an    address    before 
Congress  in  joint  session,  April  2,   1917. 


They  c 
not  ou 
en  emit 


WE  know  now  clearly,  as  we  knew 
before  we  ourselves  were  en- 
gaged in  the  War,  that  we  are  not 
enemies  of  the  German  people,  and 
they  are  not  our  enemies.  They  did  not 
originate,  or  desire,  this  hideous  war, 
or  wish  that  we  should  be  drawn  into 
it,  and  we  are  vaguely  conscious  that 
we  are  fighting  their  cause,  as  they  will 
some  day  see  it  themselves,  as  well  as 
our  own. '  They  themselves  are  in  the 
grip  of  the  same  sinister  power  that 
has  stretched  its  ugly  talons  out  and 
drawn  blood  from  us. 

Austria-Hungary  was  to  be  as  much 
their  tool  and  pawn  as  Serbia,  Bulgaria, 


TOUCHING   THE    WAR 


Turkey,  or  the  ponderous  States  of  the 
East.  Austria-Hungary,  indeed,  was  to 
become  a  part  of  the  Central  German 
Empire,  absorbed  and  dominated  by 
the  same  forces  and  influences  that 
originally  cemented  the  German  States 
themselves. 

The  dream  had  its  heart  at  Berlin. 
It  could  have  had  its  heart  nowhere 
else.  It  rejected  entirely  the  idea  of  the 
solidarity  of  race.  The  choice  of  peo- 
ples played  no  part  at  all  in  the  con- 
templated binding  together  of  the 
racial  and  political  units,  which  could 
keep  together  only  by  force.  And  they 
actually  carried  the  greater  part  of  that 
amazing  plan  into  execution. 

Look  how  things  stand.  Austria,  at 
their  mercy  ^  has  acted,  not  upon  its  own 
initiative  or  upon  the  choice  of  its  own 
people,  but  at  Berlin's  dictation  ever 
since  the  war  began.  ...  If  they 


180  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

succeed  they  are  safe,  and  Germany  and 
the  world  are  undone.  If  they  fail, 
Germany  is  saved  and  the  world  will 
be  at  peace.  If  they  succeed,  America 
will  fall  within  the  menace,  and  we,  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  world,  must  remain 
armed,  as  they  will  remain,  and  must 
make  ready  for  the  next  step  in  their 
aggression.  If  they  fail,  the  world  may 
unite  for  peace  and  Germany  may  be  of 
the  union. 

We  are  ready  to  plead  at  the  bar  of 
history,  and  our  flag  shall  wear  a  new 
luster.  Once  more  we  shall  make  good 
with  our  lives  and  fortunes  the  great 
faith  to  which  we  are  born,  and  a  new 
glory  shall  shine  in  the  face  of  our 
people. 

Speech  in  Washington  Monument  Grounds,  June 
14,  1917. 


TOUCHING   THE    WAR 


OUR  object  is,  of  course,  to  win 
the  war;  and  we  shall  not  slacken 
or  suffer  ourselves  to  be  diverted  until 
it  is  won. 

We  shall  be  willing  and  glad  to  pay 
the  full  price  for  peace,  and  pay  it  un- 
grudgingly. We  know  what  that  price 
will  be.  It  will  be  full,  impartial  jus- 
tice,— justice  done  at  every  point  and  to 
every  nation  that  the  final  settlement 
must  affect,  our  enemies  as  well  as  our 
friends. 

It  is  this  thought  that  has  been  ex- 
pressed in  the  formula,  "No  annexa- 
tions, no  contributions,  no  punitive  in- 
demnities." 

Germany's  success  by  skill,  by  indus- 
try, by  knowledge,  by  enterprise  we  did 
not  grudge  or  oppose,  but  admired, 
rather.  She  had  built  up  for  herself  a 
real  empire  of  trade  and  influence, 
secured  by  the  peace  of  the  world. 


182 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


We  owe  it,  however,  to  ourselves  to 
say  that  we  do  not  wish  in  any  way  to 
impair  or  to  rearrange  the  Austro-Hun- 
garian  Empire.  It  is  no  affair  of  ours 
what  they  do  with  their  own  life,  either 
industrially  or  politically.  We  do  not 
purpose  or  desire  to  dictate  to  them  in 
any  way.  We  only  desire  to  see  that 
their  affairs  are  left  in  their  own  hands, 
in  all  matters,  great  or  small.  We  shall 
hope  to  secure  for  the  peoples  of  the 
Balkan  peninsula  and  for  the  people  of 
the  Turkish  Empire  the  right  and  op- 
portunity to  make  their  own  lives  safe, 
their  own  fortunes  secure  against  op- 
pression or  injustice  and  from  the  dic- 
tation of  foreign  courts  or  parties. 
We  intend  And  our  attitude  and  purpose  with 

regard  to  Germany  herself  are  of  a 
like  kind.  We  intend  no  wrong  against 
the  German  Empire,  no  interference 
with  her  internal  affairs. 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


The  wrongs,  the  very  deep  wrongs, 
committed  in  this  war  will  have  to  be 
righted.  That  of  course.  But  they  can- 
not and  must  not  be  righted  by  the 
commission  of  similar  wrongs  against 
Germany  and  her  allies. 

One  very  embarrassing  obstacle  that 
stands  in  our  way  is  that  we  are  at  war 
with  Germany  but  not  with  her  allies. 
I  therefore  very  earnestly  recommend 
that  the  Congress  immediately  declare 
the  United  States  in  a  state  of  war  with 
Austria-Hungary. 

The  hand  of  God  is  laid  upon  the 
nations.  He  will  show  them  favor,  I 
devoutly  believe,  only  if  they  rise  to  the 
clear  heights  of  His  own  justice  and 
mercy. 

Parts  of  an  address  delivered  at  a  joint  session 
of  Congress,  December  4,  1917. 


184 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Ruthless 
master 
of  the 
German 
people 


THE  object  of  this  war  is  to  de- 
liver the  free  peoples  of  the  world 
from  the  menace  and  the  actual  power 
of  a  vast  military  establishment.  This 
power  is  not  the  German  people.  It  is 
the  ruthless  master  of  the  German  peo- 
pie. 

The  American  people  have  suffered 
intolerable  wrongs  at  the  hands  of  the 
Imperial  German  Government,  but  they 
desire  no  reprisal  upon  the  German 
people  who  have  themselves  suffered  all 
things  in  this  war  which  they  did  not 
choose. 

We  believe  that  the  intolerable 
wrongs  done  in  this  war  by  the  furious 
and  brutal  power  of  the  Imperial  Ger- 
man Government  ought  to  be  repaired, 
but  not  at  the  expense  of  the  sovereignty 
of  any  people — rather  a  vindication  of 
the  sovereignty  both  of  those  that  are 
weak  and  of  those  that  are  strong. 


TOUCHING   THE    WAR 


Punitive  damages,  the  dismemberment 
of  empire,  the  establishment  of  selfish 
and  exclusive  economic  leagues,  we 
deem  inexpedient  and  in  the  end  worse 
than  futile,  no  proper  basis  for  a  peace 
of  any  kind,  least  of  all  for  an  enduring 
peace.  That  must  be  based  upon  justice 
and  fairness  and  the  common  rights  of 
mankind. 

Reply  to  the  Pope's  Peace  Message. 

WE  have  ourselves  proposed  no 
injustice,  no  aggression.  We 
are  ready,  whenever  the  final  reckoning 
is  made,  to  be  just  to  the  German  peo- 
ple, deal  fairly  with  the  German  power, 
as  with  all  others.  There  can  be  no 
difference  between  peoples  in  the  final 
judgment,  if  it  is  indeed  to  be  a  right- 
eous judgment.  To  propose  anything 
but  justice,  even-handed  and  dispas- 
sionate justice,  to  Germany  at  any  time, 


i86 


THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


Force, 
force  to 
the  utmost 


whatever  the  outcome  of  the  war,  would 
be  to  renounce  and  dishonor  our  own 
cause,  for  we  ask  nothing  that  we  are 
not  willing  to  accord. 

Germany  has  once  more  said  that 
force,  and  force  alone,  shall  decide 
whether  justice  and  peace  shall  reign  in 
the  affairs  of  men,  whether  right  as 
America  conceives  it  or  dominion  as  she 
conceives  it  shall  determine  the  destinies 
of  mankind.  There  is,  therefore,  but 
one  response  possible  from  us :  Force, 
force  to  the  utmost,  force  without  stint 
or  limit,  the  righteous  and  triumphant 
force  which  shall  make  right  the  law  of 
the  world  and  cast  every  selfish  dominion 
down  in  the  dust. 

Speech    at    the    opening    of    the    Third    Liberty 
Loan,  Baltimore,  April  6,  1918. 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


AFTER  all,  the  test  of  whether  it  is 
possible  for  either  Government  to 
go   any   further   in  this   comparison   of 
views  is  simple  and  obvious.    The  prin- 
ciples to  be  applied  are  these: 

First,  that  each  part  of  the  final  set- 
tlement must  be  based  upon  the  essen- 
tial justice  of  that  particular  case  and 
upon  such  adjustments  as  are  most  likely 
to  bring  a  peace  that  will  be  permanent; 

Second,  that  peoples  and  provinces 
are  not  to  be  bartered  about  from 
sovereignty  to  sovereignty  as  if  they 
were  mere  chattels  and  pawns  in  a 
game,  even  the  great  game,  now  for- 
ever discredited,  of  the  balance  of 
power;  but  that — 

Third,  every  territorial  settlement  in- 
volved in  this  war  must  be  made  in  the 
interest  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  popu- 
lations concerned,  and  not  as  a  part  of 


1 88  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

any  mere  adjustment  or  compromise  of 
claims  amongst  rival  states;  and — 

Fourth,  that  all  well-defined  national 
aspirations  shall  be  accorded  the  utmost 
satisfaction  that  can  be  accorded  them 
without  introducing  new  or  perpetuating 
old  elements  of  discord  and  antagonism 
that  would  be  likely  in  time  to  break 
the  peace  of  Europe  and  consequently 
of  the  world. 

A  general  peace  erected  upon  such 
foundations  can  be  discussed. 

Address   delivered   before   the   joint  Houses   of 
Congress,  February  11,   1918. 

THERE  can  be  but  one  issue.  The 
settlement  must  be  final.  There 
can  be  no  compromise.  No  halfway  de- 
cision would  be  tolerable.  No  halfway 
decision  is  conceivable.  These  are  the 
ends  for  which  the  associated  peoples  of 
the  world  are  fighting  and  which  must 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


be  conceded  them  before  there  can  be 
peace: 

1  The  destruction  of  every  arbitrary 
power    anywhere    that    can    separately, 
secretly,  and  of  its  single  choice  disturb 
the  peace  of  the  world;  or,   if  it  can- 
not be  presently  destroyed,  at  the  least 
its  reduction  to  virtual  impotence. 

2  The  settlement  of  every  question, 
whether  of  territory,  of  sovereignty,  of 
economic    arrangement,    or   of   political 
relationship,  upon  the  basis  of  the  free 
acceptance    of    that    settlement    by    the 
people  immediately  concerned,  and  not 
upon  the  basis  of  the  material  interest 
or   advantage   of   any   other   nation   or 
people  which  may  desire  a  different  set- 
tlement for  the  sake  of  its  own  exterior 
influence  or  mastery. 

3  The  consent  of  all  nations   to  be 
governed  in  their  conduct  toward  each 
other  by  the  same  principles  of  honor 


I9O  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

and  of  respect  for  the  common  law  of 
civilized  society  that  govern  the  indi- 
vidual citizens  of  all  modern  states  in 
their  relations  with  one  another;  to  the 
end  that  all  promises  and  covenants 
may  be  sacredly  observed,  no  private 
plots  or  conspiracies  hatched,  no  selfish 
injuries  wrought  with  impunity,  and  a 
mutual  trust  established  upon  the  hand- 
some foundation  of  a  mutual  respect 
for  right. 

4  The  establishment  of  an  organiza- 
tion of  peace  which  shall  make  it  cer- 
tain that  the  combined  power  of  free 
nations  will  check  every  invasion  of 
right  and  serve  to  make  peace  and  jus- 
tice the  more  secure  by  affording  a 
definite  tribunal  of  opinion  to  which  all 
must  submit  and  by  which  every  inter- 
national readjustment  that  cannot  be 
amicably  agreed  upon  by  the  peoples 
directly  concerned  shall  be  sanctioned. 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


These  great  objects  can  be  put  into 
a  single  sentence:  uWhat  we  seek  is 
the  reign  of  law,  based  upon  the  con- 
sent of  the  governed  and  sustained  by 
the  organized  opinion  of  mankind. " 
From  his  Oration,  July  4,  1918. 

nHHESE,  then,  are  some  of  the  par- 
X  ticulars,  and  I  state  them  with 
the  greater  confidence  because  I  can 
state  them  authoritatively  as  represent- 
ing this  Government's  interpretation  of 
its  own  duty  with  regard  to  peace : 

First,  the  impartial  justice  meted  out 
must  involve  no  discrimination  between 
those  to  whom  we  wish  to  be  just  and 
those  to  whom  we  do  not  wish  to  be 
just.  It  must  be  a  justice  that  plays  no 
favorites  and  knows  no  standard  but 
the  equal  rights  of  the  several  peoples 
concerned ; 

Second,  no  special  or  separate  inter- 


192  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

est  of  any  single  nation  or  any  group 
of  nations  can  be  made  the  basis  of 
any  part  of  the  settlement  which  is  not 
consistent  with  the  common  interest  of 
all; 

Third,  there  can  be  no  leagues  or 
alliances  of  special  covenants  and  under- 
standings within  the  general  and  com- 
mon family  of  the  League  of  Nations; 

Fourth,  and  more  specifically,  there 
can  be  no  special,  selfish  economic  com- 
binations within  the  League  and  no  em- 
ployment of  any  form  of  economic  boy- 
cott or  exclusion  except  as  the  power 
of  economic  penalty  by  exclusion  from 
the  markets  of  the  world  may  be  vested 
in  the  League  of  Nations  itself  as  a 
means  of  discipline  and  control; 

Fifth,  all  international  agreements 
and  treaties  of  every  kind  must  be 
made  known  in  their  entirety  to  the  rest 
of  the  world. 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


Special  alliances  and  economic  rival- 
ries and  hostilities  have  been  the  pro- 
lific source  in  the  modern  world  of  the 
plans  and  passions  that  produce  war. 
It  would  be  an  insincere  as  well  as  an 
insecure  peace  that  did  not  exclude 
them  in  definite  and  binding  terms. 

From  his  address  September  27,  1918. 

THE  President  feels  that  it  is  also 
his  duty  to  add  that  neither  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  nor, 
he  is  quite  sure,  the  Governments  with 
which  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  is  associated  as  a  belligerent  will 
consent  to  consider  an  armistice  so  long 
as  the  armed  forces  of  Germany  con- 
tinue the  illegal  and  inhumane  practices 
which  they  still  persist  in.  At  the  very 
time  that  the  German  Government 
approaches  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  with  proposals  of  peace 


I 

194  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 


its  submarines  are  engaged  in  sinking 
passenger  ships  at  sea,  and  not  the  ships 
alone,  but  the  very  boats  in  which 
their  passengers  and  crews  seek  to  make 
their  way  to  safety;  and  in  their  present 
enforced  withdrawal  from  Flanders  and 
France  the  German  armies  are  pursuing 
a  course  of  wanton  destruction  which 
has  always  been  regarded  as  in  direct 
violation  of  the  rules  and  practices  of 
civilized  warfare.  Cities  and  villages, 
if  not  destroyed,  are  being  stripped  of 
all  they  contain  not  only  but  often  of 
their  very  inhabitants.  The  nations  as- 
sociated against  Germany  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  agree  to  a  cessation  of  arms 
while  acts  of  inhumanity,  spoliation,  and 
desolation  are  being  continued  which 
they  justly  look  upon  with  horror  and 
with  burning  hearts. 

From  his  answer  to  the  German  note  of  October 
12,  1918. 


TOUCHING    THE    WAR 


FEELING  that  the  whole  peace  of 
the  world  depends  now  on  plain 
speaking  and  straightforward  action, 
the  President  deems  it  his  duty  to  say, 
without  any  attempt  to  soften  what 
may  seem  harsh  words,  that  the  nations 
of  the  world  do  not  and  cannot  trust 
the  word  of  those  who  have  hitherto 
been  the  masters  of  German  policy,  and 
to  point  out  once  more  that  in  con- 
cluding peace  and  attempting  to  undo 
the  infinite  injuries  and  injustices  of 
this  war  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  cannot  deal  with  any  but  veri- 
table representatives  of  the  German  peo- 
ple who  have  been  assured  of  a  genu- 
ine constitutional  standing  as  the  real 
rulers  of  Germany.  If  it  must  deal 
with  the  military  masters  and  the  mon- 
archical autocrats  of  Germany  now, 
or  if  it  is  likely  to  have  to  deal  with 
them  later  in  regard  to  the  international 


196  THE    WISDOM    OF    WOODROW    WILSON 

obligations  of  the  German  Empire,  it 
must  demand,  not  peace  negotiations, 
but  surrender.  Nothing  can  be  gained 
by  leaving  this  essential  thing  unsaid. 

From  the  reply  to  the  German  note  of  October 
20,   1918. 


Date  Due 


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